


From Eden

by frombluetored



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, I love them all, Lyra being just as ambitious and clever as Lord Asriel-- but also for good reason and with love, Lyra/Will reunion fic, Malcolm Polstead being Malcolm - tenderhearted and giving and brave, Will Parry being Will Parry -- steady as the rising sun, and tidbits from once upon a time in the north, as well as themes i've always been curious to examine in the hdm universe, features Lyra being just as manipulative and deceitful as Mrs. Coulter -- but for good reasons, many references to lyra's oxford, the lantern slides, this is meant to take place after The Secret Commonwealth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 258,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12975126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frombluetored/pseuds/frombluetored
Summary: "Maybe it means nothing. It just is.""Everything means something," Lyra said severely. "We just have to figure out how to read it." (Lyra's Oxford, pg 6)---The prophecy contained more than anybody was told. As both Lyra and Will work towards reuniting, they find themselves carried willingly towards that hidden destiny.





	1. last true mouthpiece

**Author's Note:**

> I devoured the His Dark Materials series in less than a week and promptly fell apart over the ending. This started as a therapeutic way to process the tragic ending and ended up much bigger than I'd planned. I really enjoyed writing it and will probably continue on with it. I have no idea where the HDM fandom is most active- here or ff.net-- so I'm cross-posting this to get a feel for where everybody congregates! I'll end up only posting chapters on one eventually, though. If you read this, thank you, and I hope you enjoy!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will stumbles upon the key to a different type of travel. Lyra finds help in an unexpected place as she struggles to decipher a particularly complex answer from her alethiometer.

21 JUNE 2009  
OXFORD, ENGLAND

It had been a long while since William Parry had felt this bad.

He touched his own forehead with a trembling hand and felt the burning fire of his skin. His bone-deep fatigue had left him feeling out of sorts for days leading up to this fever, but he had assumed the source of his illness was the rapidly-approaching date; he often felt exceptionally unwell as the twenty-fourth of June approached, plagued alternatively with spine-tingling excitement and then, more often, with sickening grief. It was a double-edged knife to his heart: he craved and longed and pined for the closeness (even now, even after all this time, even when he knew that perhaps he shouldn’t), but the closeness was so far from close enough that it rendered his heart in the most terrible of ways.

And he had sworn to himself that this year would be different. He had distracted himself with a fanatic mania that concerned Mary, and Jade, and—when she was feeling coherent, which was most of the time now—his mother, too. He worked nearly nonstop, even going so far as to sleep on the sofa within his office on some days. When he wasn’t working, he was doing whatever it is that needed to be done for his mother: the shopping, household chores, any and every odd job he could find. He could have found a wealth of distraction within his girlfriend Jade, but instinctively—with the same sort of intangible perception that had served him well with the knife—he felt that would be a mistake. Rather, he avoided anyone likely to ask him probing questions about his emotional state, finding solace in Kirjava’s quiet companionship and his mother’s calm presence. Even Mary wasn’t safe, and she had become quite adept at reading Will’s moods and sensing what he needed after all these years.

He had thought he’d been doing a decent job of it all. He thought of _her_ less this year than he had any other year, and while that sometimes terrified him as he lay awake at night, wrestling with the urge to recall, replay, and hoard every single memory he could stir up of _her_ , it was a relief, too. Remembering hurt and forgetting hurt and—sometimes (in June, _especially_ in June) all he could think of was the hurt. But he didn’t feel quite as hollowed out as he sometimes did, and he was more or less okay, and had he not found himself wracked with illness three days before _the day_ , he would’ve thought he’d done it. However, he knew his restless state the weeks leading up had certainly attributed to this sickness if not caused it outright. It was funny, anyway; how many cumulative hours did he spend each week lecturing his patients on the importance of proper diet, sleep, and relaxation? And here he was, working himself to the brink (she would’ve laughed at that one.)

Kirjava leapt suddenly onto the bed, drawn to Will as soon as he’d realized his own state. She stepped lightly onto his chest and leaned in, rubbing her face briefly against his cheek, a low, rumbling purr filling the space around them.

“You’re ill,” Kirjava voiced needlessly. She settled down to rest on him as if drawn to his body heat like an actual cat would have been. In Will’s sickened haze, he watched with passive fascination and fondness as the lights shined and glowed on her glossy, multicolored fur. She had seemed less energetic than usual lately too, but then again, so had he. “Have we caught the flu?”

“Must have,” he realized. They had seen a surprising number of patients with the flu in the past two weeks. Will’s immune system was certainly not up to par lately. “Ah well,” he began to say, resigned to the fact that he’d have to phone in sick and lie at home and—

“Will.”

His dæmon looked at him, and when their eyes met, the same terrible concern overcame them in the same instant.

“We will,” Will said at once, weak voice tight with sudden (desperate) determination. “We _will_.”

He knew Kirjava felt just as terrible as he did. And he knew that, in his current state, if he didn’t improve in three days or rather got worse, getting to the Botanic Garden would be next to impossible. He knew those things just as well as he knew—with a blinding, aching clarity—that he would drag himself by his hands if need be.

“We must,” his dæmon affirmed. He sensed what she would say before she said it. “And if we must, we must have someone to look after you to help you get better.”

His entire being shied away from the suggestion. The idea of somebody here, in his flat, waiting on him like a child while he shivered and sweated through the flu, bothered him. The only person he would ever permit—he stopped. He self-corrected. The only person _in his world_ that he would ever allow to see him that vulnerable was his mother, and he would never give her one burden more as long as he lived. “I don’t need anybody to look after me.”

“We’ll get better sooner.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“When you’re like this?” her paw swiped gently at his boiling face. “Certainly not.”

Will turned his face and hid it into his pillow. He shook despite the fact that his back was damp with perspiration and sticking to his bed linens. The mere idea of throwing his duvet off only made him shiver harder. He knew he needed to take a fever reducer, and drink fluids, and rest, but it was easier said than done. His legs felt like gelatin. His head was throbbing hard, like hot metal being pounded over rocks, like—

“Mary will help us.”

He ignored his dæmon. Her nails flexed gently into his bare back, annoyed. “The flu gets worse before it gets better.”

“I know that. I’m a doctor.”

“Act like one,” she snapped back. She withdrew her paws from his back. Will didn’t have to look over at her to know she was curling up into a ball. “ _Pan_ would say—”

Maybe it was his fever making him delusional and short-tempered, but he felt pain spark fast in his heart, and he lashed out at once.

“Hush. You have no idea what he would say. We haven’t seen him in years. We will never see him again. And maybe he won’t even be there. Maybe they stopped coming ages ago. We wouldn’t know. Because we’re no closer to them then than we are right now, not really. And maybe we ought to have moved on. I bet she has. Brave and lovely and—I bet she has. Leave me be.”

It was a testament to his own agony that he was asking his own soul to leave him be, that he was lashing out at her, that he was injuring her to injure himself. She reacted just as he knew she would: she leapt from the bed unsteadily, just as unwell as Will felt, and just as hurt.

* * *

 

He had managed to pull himself together enough to leave the bed to get some paracetamol, but he didn’t make it back to his bed. He ended up settling back down on the sitting room sofa, too tired and shaky to make it back to his bed. Kirjava avoided him, though he knew she longed for his comfort and company just as much as he longed for hers.

It was there—shivering on his sofa, shirtless beneath a scratchy blanket accidentally nicked from one hospital or another after one of his mum’s many visits, feeling physically bad and emotionally worse—that his girlfriend found him. Will knew of her arrival the second she arrived, for she entered his flat with a burst of noise, humming softly as she did. He heard what sounded like shopping bags as they dropped to the worktop surfaces. Chagrin seized him at once. He struggled to sit up, to leave the room, to hide himself away so Jade couldn’t see him like _this_ …but he was too ill. He got so dizzy the first time he tried to rise that he had to lie back down at once.

“Hello, kitty,” Jade whispered kindly to Kirjava. There was a short, curious pause. “What are you doing curled up under there? You look poorly. Are you ill, kitty?”

Will could _feel_ Kirjava’s irritation. She was almost certainly giving Jade reproachful eyes. Had he been less ill, he might’ve felt embarrassed for his dæmon’s behavior.

“Will?” Jade called a moment later. “Will, is something wrong with your cat? She doesn’t seem right, she’s all lethargic, I think I ought to take her down to my clinic and check her out—oh.” Jade stopped in the sitting room doorway. Will met her dark eyes, though he felt like he would have rather sunk beneath the ground. He put all his energy into sitting up straight and working to appear perfectly normal. He failed. “Oh, you look horrid.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean…” her cheeks burned. Soft-edged and self-conscious, Jade clarified her words, as if offending someone was the worst possible offense there was. “You look like you’re ill.”

“I think it’s the flu,” he admitted reluctantly.

She rushed over to him and fell down at his side. Her dry hands pressed against the flushed skin of his face. “You should have rang. Do you need to go to A&E?”

“Of course not,” he said shortly. “It’s only the flu.”

“People die from the flu, don’t they?” she reminded him, though—like any contradiction from Jade—it sounded more like a question than a rebuttal. It had taken Will a very long time to get used to that. And to get used to her reluctance for conflict, her easily-bruised conviction, her anxious sensitivity. (Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly vexed, Kirjava accused him of choosing Jade simply because she was the farthest thing from _her_ that he could find. Outwardly, he resented that and denied it vehemently; he cared genuinely for Jade and had made no such decision consciously, but part of him wondered deep down if perhaps Kirjava was right.)

“Only the very young and the very old, and seeing as though I am neither, I believe I’ll be just fine.”

She could sense his coldness. It was no surprise: it was rolling off him in waves. He couldn’t help it. He expected her to leave in a flurry of injured feelings and tears, leaving him to tend to himself as he wanted, but maybe she was picking up traits from him after all their time together because she did not leave. Instead, she fussed over his temperature, she brought him water that he stubbornly insisted he did not need, she tucked a lighter blanket over him and watched him pleadingly with doleful eyes until he relented to nibble on a bit of dry toast. It was oddly motherly of her. It felt strange to him. Part of him, despite his insistence, was relieved to be taken care of in his miserable state, but it felt wrong for Jade to be the one doing it. And it wasn’t only him that she was worried about.

“Your cat looks ill as well,” Jade pressed, her eyes appraising Kirjava as she slinked into the sitting room. Kirjava leapt weakly into Will’s lap and didn’t spare Jade even the slightest bit of attention. Will’s dæmon had resented Jade from the first moment they had met, for Jade, a veterinarian, had taken to calling her ‘kitty'. Jade made desperate, affectionate pleas for Kirjava’s attention. _“A cat has never disliked me before,”_ Jade had said at the time, deeply bothered. All her attempts to reach out and pet the “cat” (it set Will’s teeth on edge to ever have to refer to his beloved dæmon in that way) had been foiled, either by Kirjava’s physical evasions or Will’s palpable discomfort. In fact, their very first genuine fight—nearly six months into their relationship—was over Kirjava. Jade, being the good little veterinarian she was, found it abhorrent that Will never had his cat seen to by a vet, never had her inoculated, never had her ears cleaned or her teeth checked. Will could have opened up and bared his soul by telling her the truth, but never did it feel like a true, viable option. So he lied by omission and he evaded questions and he gave what he could and took what he could and he told himself: _yes, this is good. This is fine. She’s intelligent, and she’s kind, and she’s gentle to animals, and she cares for me, and I for her, and that can be enough. Why can’t that be enough?_

Well, Kirjava had made _her_ thoughts on that matter painfully clear, anyway.

“I can look over her,” Jade offered nervously. Her voice trembled uncertainly. Instinctively, she _must_ have sensed that touching Kirjava was different than touching a real cat. “If you hold her very still, I’ll see to her.”

Will hadn’t felt nauseated until that moment. For a second, he forced himself to consider it. He could have tried to restrain Kirjava in place. She very well may have scratched at him and fled, but he could have tried. He could have pleaded with her, could have said: _let us open ourselves up again, shall we?_ But it felt wrong. It felt _deeply_ wrong. Even the idea set him on edge and made him dreadfully queasy. And as she reached her hands out towards the dæmon, Will pushed Kirjava from his lap right as she sprang away so that she could not—and would not— be touched.

Kirjava was trembling with agitation and affront. She knew what he had almost done and she took great offense to it.

“She’s all right. I’m sure of it,” Will told Jade, struggling to keep his own emotions in check.

Jade was more perceptive than he gave her credit for. “You don’t trust me with your cat.”

“I—no, she’s just…she’s not a very nice cat, really, and she’ll scratch and bite you,” he half-lied. He still wasn’t a very good liar, but he did his best. Kirjava hissed softly in response.

“I’ve dealt with worse. Just today I had a Great Dane nearly take my arm off. I’m not frightened of your cat.” But then she looked over at Kirjava, and the look Kirjava was giving her—fierce and boiling—seemed to change her mind. She looked away from her at once.

“Are you afraid I’ll mistreat her?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“She shouldn’t be touched.”

Again, he could tell she had somehow already sensed that, but her need to rationalize everything made her push past that gut feeling towards logic. She was a vet; she touched and mended any and every animal she saw that needed it. “Why?”

“Because she shouldn’t,” he said firmly, fiercely. He turned his fever-hazy eyes to Jade’s and stared hard into them, his jaw locked. “Do you understand?”

Her feelings were hurt. She looked down at her lap and swallowed hard. Her soft, pretty face seemed to melt with sorrow. “Yes,” she finally whispered brokenly. She stood. “I do. I think I want to go now. You should be okay for a few more hours, and I’ll leave a jug of water and some more medicine here, and you have my number if you want—if you need me.”

Guilt took over his discomfort. “Jade…”

She had risen to leave, and when he spoke, she stopped walking, but she did not turn around. With her back turned, she said: “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all, Will.”

He felt his heart lurch. He didn’t know what to say in response.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re not even the person that I know. You know?”

Again: everything was a question, everything was an unsure inquiry. He nodded mutely.

“You won’t let me in,” she accused, though the broken little way she said it made him feel like she was really blaming herself.

He had no idea what to say back to that, either. It was more spot-on than she ever could’ve guessed. She had no idea that William Parry, the boy she’d met at university in a biology course, had once traveled through worlds, had once yielded the darkest weapon to ever exist, had once been to the Land of the Dead, had once felt his soul ripped apart (his heart, too, his heart, too). She had no idea of any of it. And because of that, because no amount of words could ever explain it to her in a way that could make her _understand_ , she was right to think she didn’t know him at all. Because she didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said truly. He remembered the vow he and Lyra had made all those years ago with a surge of intense guilt. He had not abided by it. He had not treated his lovers fairly. And was it worse that his guilt over this situation was because he had betrayed his promise to Lyra rather than because he’d hurt someone he cared for? He thought it was.

“Ring me if you need me. Ring me if you want me.”

“Okay. I will. And thank you for your help.” It sounded stiff even to his ears. Part of him wanted to beg her not to walk out. He wanted to dredge up every single ounce of affection he had for her and make this right. But that felt as unnatural as letting her touch Kirjava.

And as she walked away, likely taking with her the longest romantic relationship he had ever known, he had to wonder if he was broken, if perhaps his own self had shattered alongside the subtle knife all those years ago.

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you would even _think_ of letting her touch me,” Kirjava said later. He was curled up in bed again, Kirjava in the circle of his arms. She sounded reproachful despite their cuddling. “I never felt so ashamed or horrified in my life.”

“Me neither. And why do we feel like that, Kirjava?”

“You know why. It isn’t right. It simply isn’t done.”

“But Lyra touched you. And I touched Pan. And that felt…” he trailed off. Even now, he felt a tingle of electricity down his spine, and he shivered, and he felt an impossible chasm of longing widen in his chest. It worried him, sometimes, how that one moment—that one touch—had felt more _real_ than any touch he had ever had since then.

“We love them,” Kirjava said passionately, affronted that he had even compared the two situations. She had never wavered in her devotion, not once. “I don’t love Jade and her dæmon. If he were outside like me, he would be an annoying little dog, constantly chasing things and talking when one ought not to.”

“But she has good things, Kirjava,” he heard himself say. It sounded a bit pleading. “She’s intelligent and—”

“—and she’s nice and she’s helpful and she’s polite and she’s useful and she’s pretty,” Kirjava mocked. She scoffed and turned away from him. She reached a paw up to groom at her whiskers. “So what? We don’t even like those things.”

“We do so.”

“We don’t! We like brave and fierce and wild and strong—”

“Stop,” he begged. “ _You’re_ supposed to be steering me right. You’re not supposed to be making this harder. You told me the angel said that.”

He could feel Kirjava’s quick shame. It wasn’t simple and it wasn’t easy for her, because as much as he loved Lyra, that’s how much she loved Pan. _Had_ loved? At what point did one find themselves forced into the past tense?

“I am steering you right,” Kirjava defended herself a bit later. “Only this is a separate matter entirely. We’re not talking about our separation from them. That’s over and done with. We’re talking about our life, Will. And Jade isn’t right for us. You can’t even tell her that I’m your dæmon; how are you meant to spend your life with her?”

Passionate anger swelled inside his chest. “How am I meant to tell _anybody_ that you’re my dæmon?! Who here could _possibly_ understand? They’ll think I’m mad—they’ll think I’ve got what Mum…” he stopped, fuming. He recollected. “Kirjava, how are we meant to ever find someone here that we love like we love—loved—like we…” it was too difficult. And his head hurt. And his heart ached. And he was tired. Sometimes it was easy. And sometimes, like now, it was the most impossible thing he had ever or would ever face. “I sometimes wish…”

“No you don’t.”

He didn’t. The only thing worse than the pain and the missing was thinking of a world where he had never even known that _they_ existed.

Wracked with discomfort of every sort, Will leaned over and buried his face in Kirjava’s fur. He breathed in her scent and let the comfort she always brought ease the pain as much as it could.

“I think that I may hate June now.”

“I hate it as much as I love it.”

She understood every bit of him. Because she was him. And at least they had each other.

* * *

 

He hadn’t practiced much in the past year. The last time he had genuinely attempted it—with every bit of his focus and effort—had been when he was twenty-two and his mum was going through a particularly rough patch. He and Kirjava had decided that it was better for him to stop trying so much after he lost the entirety of his fifteenth year of life to the task: he had spent nearly every single day trying to attempt what his father, the shaman, had known how to do, to the point that he did nearly nothing else besides go to school and care for his mother. He and Kirjava agreed—tear-soaked and disappointed to their very cells—that it wasn’t healthy for them to live like that, that it wasn’t what Lyra and Pan would have wanted. So he had backed off of it and he had tried very hard to come to terms with the way things were now. And on the whole, he succeeded. He missed her terribly, always, and not a day went by that he didn’t think of her, but he made top marks on his A-levels, met an offer for Oxford University Medical School, he made a couple of friends his age that were fun to be around even if not wholly aware of who exactly Will was, and he dated one girl before Jade. He tried.

And this month, he was tired of trying, so with his body still aching with illness, he sat on the floor of his bedroom and closed his eyes.

“I’ll get the lights,” Kirjava murmured. Will saw the lights flicker off from behind his closed eyelids a moment later. Kirjava padded over and curled up in his lap. He took a deep, steadying breath, and he set about doing something he had absolutely no instruction on how to do. He didn’t know the steps to take, but he felt it was probably something similar to how he had used the knife and how Lyra had used the alethiometer: it couldn’t be forced. So he breathed and he extended his focus out into the air around him, probing and searching for something like a snag for a knife, inflating with desperate hope. How wonderful would it be if he could do it? How wonderful would it be to see her again? Even just to _see_ her…even just for a moment…

But there were no snags in the air because there were no more windows, and Will sat alone with Kirjava on his floor, ill and desperately sad, for hours, trying so hard to make something work that probably never would. And when his fever returned, he pulled his blanket off his bed and curled up right there on the floor, and in his fever-addled mind, he imagined that it had worked, that he had closed his eyes and his mind had slipped right up through some sort of gap between his Oxford and Lyra’s, and that she too was trying to find him, and that she was sitting in some dusty college library, stacks of huge, ancient books in front of her, Pan napping atop them, her firm-set lips pursed tightly in concentration, the slender fingers of her right hand reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears, the alethiometer cradled familiarly in her left, her blue eyes sharp with stubborn concentration—like she’d kick anybody who dared to disturb her now—and Will could feel his very heart growing inside his chest, and he extended his own arm, but there was nothing to touch. He heard a soft groan of pain slip from between his own lips, and he hadn’t meant to make it, but his heart nearly stuttered and stopped when suddenly, the woman in his imagination (imagination?) snapped her gaze up from her book in an instant, so quickly that Will felt she had certainly heard him. Her eyes—soft blue-grey in that dim light—looked right over towards where Will’s vantage point was. But he was not there. And she clearly saw nobody. And yet, she peered so hard—so intently—at him that he felt himself tremble in his own world.

“Lyra,” he tried softly, feeling foolish.

The alethiometer slipped at once from her left hand, falling down to rest inside the book opened in front of her. She jumped up at the same moment that Pan leapt off the stack of books and shot over towards where Will was seeing from.

“Pan,” she said seriously.

“I know,” he assured her.

Will didn’t know what they were doing. He didn’t know what his imagination was making them do. He didn’t even know if this was his imagination. But he refused to let it—whatever it was—slip away.

Pan shuffled around the corner of the library Will was looking out from, his nose searching out any hint of life, while Lyra kept her eyes on Will’s—though she had no idea they were his eyes, as his body was presumably back somewhere on his bedroom floor, though he couldn’t feel the floor now—and reached blindly for the alethiometer. Seeing her with that in her hand again made Will fill with intense, almost giddy joy, like maybe she could save them now like she had so many times before. She looked different than he remembered (more like Mrs. Coulter now than she probably would have liked, with the same magnetic sort of beauty, though Lyra’s seemed tougher and more other-worldly in a way Will couldn’t articulate): her face had sharper, more defined lines, her eyes and hair seemed a touch darker than they had before, her body was that of a woman and not of a child. But to him, it felt like nothing at all had changed. He clung desperately to the feeling growing inside his chest. He hadn’t felt it since they said goodbye.

And she said something beautiful, something he had never, ever imagined he’d hear again.

“Will.”

Oh, she sounded young then. Her voice wobbled just slightly near the end of his name. He needed to hold her, to reassure her that yes, it was him, and he saw her, and he would find her now, and that everything would be okay, and that she was _beautiful_ —did she know that?—and he had never stopped thinking of her, never, never, never…

But as he tried so hard to move forward physically to see her, he felt a weird, backwards tug in his chest. And a second later, he was peering up at his bedroom ceiling, panting hard, sweat soaking into his carpet, his ears ringing.

He reacted violently. Kirjava let out a dreadful, mournful yowl as Will turned over to pound his fists hard into the floor, like a toddler having a strop. He did it again, and again, and again—and then he vomited all over the carpet.

“I saw him,” he heard Kirjava say. She pressed her claws against his back urgently. “I did, Will, too.”

But his illness had gotten the best of him. He was in no state to discuss anything.

* * *

 

He woke sometime later to Mary patting his face with a cool cloth. He felt embarrassed and tried to push her hand away, but she merely sighed and pressed his objecting hand back to his side.

“You should have told me you were ill. What sort of friend am I, leaving you alone like this?” demanded Mary.

“I didn’t need help,” he said stubbornly.

Mary didn’t even bother pointing out the obvious (that he very much had). “You seem to be doing better. Your fever hasn’t come back in quite some time. You may make it to your bench after all.”

His heart lurched. He sat straight up and ignored his spinning head. “I _will_ make it to the bench.”

She seemed to consider arguing with him but then thought better of it. Will felt Kirjava stir at his side. He glanced over at her, wondering whether she thought they ought to tell Mary about what they’d experienced, but she merely looked down and began licking her paws. He took that as a no. It might have just been a hallucination, after all.

He glanced over at his alarm clock. He had been out of it for nearly seven hours.

“I missed dinner with Mum. You didn’t tell her that I’m ill, did you?” Will checked.

“Of course I didn’t. She assumed you got stuck at work again. We had a girls’ night.”

Elaine Parry and Mary Malone had become fast friends, much to Will’s deep relief, after they’d returned to this world and finished dealing with their legal troubles. Elaine and Mary were roommates—Mary offering to move in with Elaine after she insisted that Will get a place of his own to try and be a proper twenty-something—and, for the most part, things were going very well. His mum had more good days than bad and that was all Will could ask for. But he did not want to give her yet another thing to worry about by telling her that he was ill.

“Jade rang me,” Mary continued, her voice a bit _too_ light. Will looked off to the side and glared at the wall. He knew that tone. “She was terribly upset. Did you two have a row?”

He didn’t say anything. They sat in stony silence for a moment.

“I like her,” Mary reminded him. “Maybe you two could talk it out.”

He turned over and pressed his face into the pillow. “I like her, too, obviously.”

_But…_

The unspoken word hung between them. Thankfully, neither addressed it.

“Will. Your twenties are terribly hard. Everybody feels…lost or broken, like they’re not quite where their peers are at in life, or like they’re being left behind or surging too far ahead and missing out on things…it’s normal to feel this way.”

He didn’t want to talk about feeling any way. But if he couldn’t talk to Mary about it, who on this earth would he talk to? She was the only person in his entire world who would have a shot at understanding. The only one who had ever known Lyra and Pan. The only one who had ever known him as the Will Parry that he could never be again.

“There’s nothing normal about me anymore. I don’t know. Maybe there never was.”

He felt corrupted sometimes. He watched his university friends move on with life and settle down and he envied how easy it seemed to be for them.

“I bet Lyra—”

He interrupted her. He didn’t want to hear that Lyra was probably having just as hard a time adjusting to a normal life after the things they’d done and seen. Her hypothetical misery did nothing to lessen Will’s; the idea only added to it and made this whole situation all the worse.

“I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

“Sure,” Mary allowed uneasily. He very rarely turned down a chance to talk about her with someone who actually knew her. “Are you having night terrors again?”

The subject shift surprised him. He hadn’t spoken to her about his night terrors since he was in secondary school. “What?”

“You were talking in your sleep. You seemed distressed.”

He didn’t have to ask her what he was saying in his sleep. He knew and his cheeks felt a bit hot and he wouldn’t look her in her eye. For a moment, he considered asking her about what he’d seen, but he was terrified that she’d tell him it was a hallucination and nothing more, so he kept his mouth shut.

After a few minutes of companionable silence, Mary stood. “How about some tea?”

“Sure. Thanks,” he allowed.

He turned over onto his side to face Kirjava as soon as Mary had walked out. She met his gaze steadily. So many things passed between them that words weren’t necessary.

“Something is changing,” Kirjava said, after their silent conversation.

Will hoped they were right.

* * *

 

The twenty-fourth arrived quickly, and even though Will still felt a bit ill, he was well enough to make the walk to the Botanic Garden. He carried Kirjava in his arms to their bench. He sat down in the same spot he sat at this same time on this same day every single year. He inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, and then let it go. His heart was pounding by the time midday arrived. He closed his eyes and leaned heavily back against the bench. He did what he always did: searched the space around him, searched for a sign that she was close, tried to picture her sitting in this same spot in her own world, imagined that he could feel her nearby…

 _She’s here somewhere,_ he told himself, his heart rising up to crowd his throat. _She’s right where I am, right now, in this very moment, and she’s thinking of me too, and the only thing standing between us is the world._

Kirjava voiced their deep sorrow with soft, mournful mewing. He stroked his hand down her back and allowed himself a moment of unrestrained sadness. His eyes pricked with tears.

“I miss you,” he whispered aloud, and it was too honest for him to feel embarrassed or foolish.

He closed his eyes and let himself feel all of it. He didn’t push it away. And as he did, he let himself pretend that he _could_ see her. He let his mind lift up and up, ‘til he felt like he was no longer part of his own body, ‘til he imagined he was looking at her on her bench. She was the older, beautiful-looking girl he’d seen in the library, but she looked much more exhausted than she’d looked then, and she wasn’t lying against the bench with her eyes shut like Will had been. She had massive stacks of paper spread out over the bench beside her and Pan was frantically shuffling through them, and as he did, he was darting his eyes repeatedly back to a piece of paper in Lyra’s lap covered in her own handwriting. She was in a familiar trance, her eyes stuck to the alethiometer, her hand drawing down the paper as she wrote without looking. While she did that, Pan was assembling paper after paper, sorting them in some certain order, his red-gold fur shining slightly in the sun, not unlike the way Lyra’s hair was. Will longed to see what was on the paper in Lyra’s lap, but he was afraid to do anything but hover in the moment, afraid he’d snap back to reality like he had on his bedroom floor the last time he’d “imagined” like this and tried to move towards her. He felt instinctively that he had to be content with the distance, had to take what he was given and nothing more, or else he’d risk losing it all.

Thankfully, he was close enough to hear once Pantalaimon spoke.

“The elephant…we’ve got _twenty pages_ on the elephant…oh, Lyra! This is too hard! This is _much_ harder than our dissertation—”

Lyra’s eyes opened. She let out a noise like a growl. “ _Hush,_ Pan! _Damn it_! I lost it and I nearly had the last few symbols—it took me so long to get this many—I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it like that again and I certainly won’t if you keep on—” she broke off, and to Will’s horror, he saw her eyes were glassy with tears. Pan looked deeply ashamed. He set the paper to the side and scampered up into her opened arms. He flowed up and curled around her neck, rubbing his furry body affectionately against her skin as he did. Lyra turned and hid her face into his fur for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Pan said.

Lyra looked down at the paper on her lap. She held it up, and as she did, Will was able to see what she’d been doing: writing down every symbol she used to ask her question and every single symbol the alethiometer had landed on in response, with what looked like tick marks beside them, probably to indicate the order it’d landed on it, or perhaps the level she thought the symbol meaning was at, or any number of things Will had never understood. He was able to make out a compass, a candle, a bull, a beehive, a globe, an elephant…it meant nothing to him.

“We can’t give up. We simply can’t, Pan,” Lyra said. And it was clear that she was just as emotionally wrought then as Will felt. She looked like she would’ve liked to have curled around Pan and cried. But she straightened her posture and reached over for the stack of paper Pan had compiled. “Okay,” she said, and he watched with a surge of affection as she took a deep breath and tucked her dark blonde hair behind her ears. It was falling in soft waves today. “The compass. It landed there first. I felt, as I was reading it, that it was the second level meaning it probably meant, though now that I see the candle it makes me lean more towards the sixth…”

Pan seemed similarly weary, but he pressed on just as his human did. He leaned his furry face over the papers in Lyra’s hand. “A pull in a certain direction.”

“And with the candle,” Lyra added, shuffling the papers around a bit in search of something, “it means a clear path towards something illuminating…knowledge or…or _something_ , something tangible…and the bull…oh, Pan, the bull is stubbornness, for have we ever been so stubborn about anything in our life? If Dame Hannah knew what we were doing…if she knew the company we’ve been keeping with Sebastian and all of that…the things we’ve been up to these past two years…”

Pan laughed. And Will, to his utmost embarrassment, having heard the name of another man from her lips, felt a feral burst of jealousy that left him singed.

“The beehive…” Lyra trailed off and made a soft noise of frustration. Will felt a pull towards her, and he caught himself trying to lean forward, but then he felt that backwards yank in his heart. He froze at once. _No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it_ , he said, though he had no idea who he was talking to. Dust? _Don’t make me go back. I won’t do it again. I’ll stay still. I won’t be greedy. I won’t. Just let me stay…_

“I _think_ …and I don’t know why I do, Pan, I just feel it…I think the beehive means…a hub of some sort…” she shuffled wildly through the papers and read off one covered in cramped, looping script. “Here. _A seat of activity, a busy place with riches._ And the globe…the globe…maybe it means…maybe it’s in that sequence because it’s talking about the riches from before, and maybe…maybe those riches are the worlds themselves—but the elephant…Pan, I don’t understand,” she sounded teary again. “We done—we’ve done so much to get to this point and it en’t—it isn’t—fair that we’re still so far and we went all that way, we went ever so far and we _found_ what Sebastian needed and we figured it out and now this last part is all down to me and I _can’t_.”

Pantalaimon looked worried. “Let’s both look at all the pages on the elephant. I’ll take some pages and you take some. Something has got to make sense. It’s got to. We’ll figure it out. We _will_. The answer is here, we’ve only got to figure it out.”

“But the alethiometer was trying to say more before I lost it,” worried Lyra. She rubbed her pretty face. “I don’t think I can read it again. Not today. Not here, Pan.”

“Well, we’ll worry about that later. Let’s try and look at what we _did_ get, okay?” But Pan could see how weary the woman was. “Or we could just sit here and enjoy the day. I didn’t think it was a good idea to try and do this _here_ , anyway.”

“It’s horribly painful to do it here. But I don’t want to hear ‘I told you so’.”

“And I wasn’t going to say it.”

Will watched as Lyra cuddled Pan to her chest and rested her own head back against the bench, just as Will was doing somewhere in his own world, in the same exact spot, and he felt like he would die if he didn’t move towards her, and so he tried to move forward—

He jolted back to his own world only to find himself half-way standing. He lost his balance and fell forward, landing hard on the grass on his knees and hands.

“Ow,” he groaned.

Kirjava was a ball of nervous energy. She was pacing around the bench, her intelligent eyes alight with an emotion Will couldn’t name, though he was feeling it, too.

“She’s working it again. Will, I bet she asked it how to find us again. I bet she did,” Kirjava said.

Hope could be a festering infection, but he couldn’t help but let it grow.

“It could still be a hallucination,” he tried to remind them.

“Well, if it is—and I don’t think that it is—it doesn’t hurt for us to try and help, too. We can look at Mary’s books. There’s got to be something on the meanings of elephants…maybe, if we can figure out what it’s trying to say, we can figure out if there’s any way for us to help her and Pan…there was a compass and a candle and a globe and a beehive and—no, wait, was that the order? A compass, a candle, a beehive, a globe, an elephant?”

Will wasn’t sure. He was still reeling from seeing Lyra so close. From seeing her tuck her hair behind her ears again, just so…her soft blue eyes far away as she studied her alethiometer…her face—so much more defined and beautiful now than it had been in their awkward years—full of so much passion and determination…

“I should have said something to her again,” he realized too late. “I didn’t say anything. She heard me last time. I should have said something.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. She was concentrating,” Kirjava said shortly. She wound around and around Will’s ankles as she thought and paced, brushing against him affectionately. “This must be what they do. Shamen.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m doing it right,” he admitted. “With practice maybe I could do it the right way. I’m going to try again.”

Try he did, but he was too excited and antsy, and couldn’t get himself to find that balance that he’d found before. He gave up as their hour came to a close. And it was funny, but he didn’t leave, and he felt certain that Lyra hadn’t either. She was probably still there in her world, flipping through papers, writing and writing…

He sat there ‘til dusk with Kirjava curled on his lap, feeling all sorts of intense emotions churning within that did not show on his impassive face. And when he finally stood to leave, he turned to touch his hand gently to where Lyra’s head had been resting on that same bench in her own world. The nubs of his long-ago mutilated fingers gave a sudden ache as he did, though they hadn’t hurt him in over a decade now.

“Mary,” Kirjava prompted impatiently. Will obeyed. At the terraced house Mary and his mother lived in, Mary gave him space and didn’t ask any questions as he hurriedly searched through her bookshelves. He found a book on symbolism throughout history and pulled that one first. He found three or four promising titles, and after only an hour of searching through them, it became apparent that this task was larger than he’d anticipated. He was impressed by Lyra—as he often was—as he realized she had to muddle through hundreds of possible meanings for every single symbol and the various ways those meanings changed the previous ones. He read without really knowing what he was searching for, stopping only once he’d read the following paragraph:

_Elephants have been celebrated throughout various cultures for both their powerful memory and their steadfast loyalty. They remember specific friends and foes for entire lifetimes, often visiting or returning to remembered spots where they once spent time with them._

He felt something stir in his heart, but he knew he was being sentimental and that it wouldn’t help his cause, so he continued on. He read everything from ‘elephants symbolize good health’ to ‘elephants appear in dreams when you are about to meet someone important’. It turned out that elephants could symbolize a wide array of things. And Will was beyond lost. He was not, in fact, the alethiometerist.

“This is pointless,” he finally declared. He slammed a dream dictionary shut and reshelved it. Kirjava reproached him with her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. “If it was real—if I really saw her—she’ll solve it.”

Kirjava sighed. “I suppose she will in time. I just wish she could solve it now.”

She was speaking from Will’s own heart. As they sat there together, replaying what he’d seen, Will allowed himself a quiet moment of vulnerability.

“I can’t believe how much I still…when I saw her, I felt…”

“I know. I felt it, too.”

He ground his teeth anxiously for a moment (a horrible habit he’d picked up during medical school.) “Do you think that she still feels the same? After all these years? She’s changed so much. She talks differently now—proper, _almost_ —and did you hear what she said about a _dissertation_?”

He got an image in his mind of Lyra sat nicely in a lecture hall like a good little student and couldn’t help but grin. God, he would have given any measure of money to read a dissertation penned by his fiery first love.

“We’ve changed so much and we still feel the same way,” Kirjava reminded him.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” he allowed. And he’d never admitted his real worry out loud, but thankfully, he didn’t have to.

“I don’t think Sebastian is a lover,” Kirjava said confidently. She rested her face on her paws. “She didn’t speak of him like you speak of a lover.”

Will didn’t want to talk about it because he wouldn’t even know what to say. Logically, fairly, he knew he should _want_ it to be a lover, somebody she loved deeply, who treated her tenderly. But he didn’t.

“Would you say I speak of Jade like a lover?” he demanded.

“You surely don’t,” Kirjava sniffed. She licked at a spot on her paw. “That’s precisely my previous point about her, too.”

“So maybe Lyra has a Jade.” The thought made him feel a swell of sadness.

“Then I shan’t be worried. Ephemeral.”

“Kirjava.”

She continued grooming herself and did not respond to his half-hearted scold. He knew his dæmon would never come around to Jade, and he knew what that meant for their future, but he supposed he’d stuck with her so long because he was hoping that—eventually—he could feel for somebody the way he’d felt for _her_. It hadn’t happened yet.

* * *

 

He was meeting Jade for a drink after work on Friday. They were working him hard at the hospital, and by the time he arrived at the pub, his spine and feet were aching from standing so long and going on such little sleep that week.

Her eyes lit up when he slid into the seat across from her. “Hello.”

“Hi,” he greeted. He gave her a soft smile back. She accepted it with greedy eyes. “How are you?”

“Fine. Are you feeling better?” she inquired. She reached across the table. He obliged by setting his hand atop the tabletop where she could hold it. They had had a brief conversation on the phone the night prior, but there’d been no point: Jade was over her anger already and probably had been for days. Will, for his benefit, had never genuinely been angry with her.

“Much. Which is good, because they couldn’t do without me at work this week. You wouldn’t believe the number of people we’ve had in since Monday. I had a woman come in vomiting up tapeworms this morning.”

Jade—a vet—appreciated that more any other woman would have. She laughed. “Sounds similar to my morning, though mine was a pug, and its mouth wasn’t the end the worms came out.”

“Charming,” Will said. He lifted up his menu. “Did the pug recover?”

“Swimmingly,” Jade beamed.

It was a pleasant albeit unremarkable evening. Will drank perhaps a bit more than he’d planned on in his quest to unwind from the stressful work week, but by that point, there was really no point being moderate. He was unsteady by the end of the evening and felt the floor tilting slightly as he made his way to the toilets. He used it and then washed his hands with his eyes shut, trying to evade the way the room was spinning at the edges of his vision. He leaned tiredly against the sink afterwards, trying to regain enough composure to walk out of the toilets. Under the fluorescent lights, with the muffled sounds of the pub music throbbing from outside the closed door and the alcohol tainting his blood, things felt far away and hazy. He leaned against the cool wall for a moment…just a moment…just to regain his composure…but the blackness behind his eyelids turned to gold and then to ivory. He blinked blearily and struggled to comprehend the bright room panning out in front of him. Ivory porcelain walls, an intricate silver dressing table that looked antique, lights that glowed with much more warmth than the fluorescents of his world, at least three beautiful boudeuse sofas in a deep, rich midnight blue, the faraway sound of a flautist playing, a small, thin young woman with elegant hands standing in front of a floor-length mirror, desperately trying to pin her dark gold locks back with clumsy, inexperienced hands…

Lyra.

The sight of her left him genuinely breathless—and mostly from shock. He could see her reflection in the floor-length mirror, and he had never imagined her looking like this, never, not even in any of his teenage fantasies. She was eerily elegant in a fitted sage-colored gown made of silk, her hands clean and nails polished, her cheeks blushed and lips colored. Had she not been broadcasting her foul mouth at the expense of the glittering hairpin in her hands, he might’ve mistaken her for an entirely different person. It was disorienting (or maybe that was the alcohol in his system.)

“This damned thing…go _in_!” she complained, struggling with the clasp of the hairpin. Pantalaimon, who was lying around her neck like a scarf, watched anxiously through the mirror. Once Will saw the dæmon’s expression, he realized that Lyra’s impatience might not have been frustration at the pin at all, but rather nervousness. Where was she going? Why would she be nervous? After another moment of struggle, he heard the loud snap of the pin locking in place. The effect was nice: her hair was pulled back from her face, putting its effortless prettiness on display, and Will couldn’t help but smile. “There. Finally.”

“I don’t like this,” Pan voiced, his pine marten eyes locked on Lyra's reflection. “I don’t like it at all.”

“Well, we haven’t got a choice, Pan,” Lyra said bravely. She grabbed what appeared to be a handkerchief and dabbed delicately at her lipstick. The action looked so foreign that Will couldn’t do much but watch in fascination. “He’s got that book. We have to have it.”

“Titus Pyrrhos is a collector, like Lord Boreal was. Why would he give up one of his rarest books to _us_?” Pan pointed out. “And besides, I don’t like him. There were rumors about him after that awful attack on that witch last year. Or don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember. That witch was friends with Serafina. I've had dinner with their clan before. We’ll just have to keep a close eye on him—him _and_ his dæmon.” Lyra dropped her hands down to her sides and swung them childishly. “Well? Do I look all right?”

Will wanted to say _you look beautiful,_ but he knew if he spoke and she heard it that it would distract her from her task. And it must have been an important one.

Pan didn’t answer. He grumbled into her neck.

“It’ll be _fine_ , Pan. Don’t be such a coward,” Lyra scoffed. She drew her fingers slowly through the soft waves of her hair. Will felt a pull in his gut in response. “I’ll chat with him, I’ll size him up, and I’ll do what I have to do to get that book so we can figure out what the alethiometer is telling us. So we can find them, Will and Kirjava.”

Will’s heart began pounding hard. He caught himself grinning with pleasure. Assuming this wasn’t just a drunken hallucination, Lyra was doing all this to find _him_. Lyra was still looking, still hoping, just as he was. Just like she’d promised when they were only kids.

“And precisely what are you _planning_ to do?” Pan groaned. He seemed deeply bothered. It worried Will on Lyra’s behalf.

Lyra looked down at her dæmon. For a moment, there was a look in her eyes that made Will flashback to a memory of her mother sitting in that damp, dim cave, her eyes alight with determination. He shivered. “Whatever I have to do,” repeated Lyra simply.

“ _Lyra,_ ” Pan groaned. “I don’t _like it_ —”

“You’ll live. Anyway, it probably won’t come to that. I’m a brilliant liar.”

Pantalaimon didn’t seem soothed. Will panicked as they turned to walk out of the room—Lyra balancing surprisingly well on golden shoes with a noticeable heel—because he didn’t know how to follow without yanking himself from the vision as he had the previous times. He forced himself to not move an inch, to wait, to be patient. To his surprise, his mind was floating right along after them, like he was tied to the woman and her dæmon. When she walked out into a grand hall attached to a ballroom, Will’s mind followed as if he were walking after her.

Lyra smiled distractedly at a few people—acquaintances, most likely—as she scanned the crowd of people filtering into the ballroom. She seemed to have perfected passive politeness at a level Will never could’ve guessed. Her primary goal seemed to be an evasion of suspicion rather than genuine friendliness, but she didn’t seem to offend or put off anybody as she exchanged quick, brief words and then moved on through the throng of people. It was obvious that she was well-liked; people flocked to her as soon as they spotted her and never seemed to want to stop talking to her. But they also seemed to sense that she was quite busy with matters much more important than their small chat.

Lyra didn’t stop moving slowly but steadily through the crowd until she spotted the man she’d clearly come there to speak with. He was older than her, though how old Will couldn’t tell for sure. His dæmon was a weasel and she was sitting stoically at his feet. The dæmon straightened as soon as she and her human spotted Lyra making her way towards them from across the room. Will fought the intense urge to hurry after her and waited. As he’d hoped, he drifted along after her.

“Lady Belacqua,” the man greeted lowly. Will watched on as he took Lyra’s hand in his and pressed his wet lips to her hand. “You can’t conceive of how pleased I was to hear you’d accepted my invitation.”

The weasel was very interested in Pan. While Lyra smiled charmingly at the man, Pan (reluctantly) slid down from Lyra’s shoulders (after a sly poke from her prompted him to do so) and dropped down to engage the weasel in conversation.

“Lord Pyrrhos, it’s wonderful to see you. I only hope you’ll forgive my lateness,” Lyra said, an odd, refined tone to her voice that Will had never heard before. It sounded fake. He watched as she leaned in and smiled widely (a lying smile, but he doubted anybody but him could tell.) “I’ve been ever so busy, you see.”

“Ah, yes,” the man replied knowingly. He leaned in, bringing his face dangerously close to Lyra’s. Pan was shying away from the weasel, but Lyra had better command over her lies. She countered him by leaning in a bit herself, bringing their lips closer than Will could stand. “I’ve been dying to hear more about what you have been up to in the Levant. Rumors fly, Lady Belacqua, and the ones I’ve heard tell me of a strange partnership you’ve entertained on your travels. I was not sure what to think of them.”

She studied his eyes. How was poor Lord Pyrrhos to know that it was with the same probing intensity that Lyra peered at her alethiometer? He had no hope of a chance. He wouldn’t have had one even if he’d met her when she was twelve. But now that she was a woman, and had clearly found new ways to manipulate and lie, he didn’t have a shot at making it out of this ballroom with all his treasures still accounted for.

“Some rumors are true,” Lyra murmured softly. The way her eyes drifted quickly down to his lips and then back up was achingly entrancing. Will could feel himself responding to it even from another world—even when he knew her lying better than anyone. Again, he had to think about Mrs. Coulter; she had once cast her spell on Will, so he recognized it when he saw it, even when it was coming in a slightly different form from her daughter. “I was in the Levant for two years with Sebastian Makepeace, but as for what we were working on…well, forgive me. A lady must maintain some secrets.”

“Of course,” he allowed, his voice low and slippery. He stepped closer, bringing his body nearly flush to Lyra’s. She didn’t put space between them, but she also didn’t move closer, either. She seemed to be weighing her next move very carefully. “And did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish?”

“Very nearly, Lord Pyrrhos. There is one thing I am missing.”

He arched an eyebrow. “A new traveling companion?”

She laughed. It was alluring and tinkling. He had never heard her laugh like that before. Where had she learned _this_? He was equally intrigued, enticed, and repulsed. There was no denying how captivating she was, how lovely, but Will felt as if something very special to him had been snatched away and replaced by something different. This wasn't  _Lyra._ “Well. I won’t say the thought has never crossed my mind, but you’d do well not to repeat that.”

“Of _course_ ,” Lord Pyrrhos stressed, an impish grin in place. He looked up as the band began a new song. He stepped forward and set a hand low on Lyra’s back, pulling her to him. “Shall we continue this while we dance?”

Lyra had little choice now, what with his hand pressing her to him and the people around them beginning to shuffle towards the dance floor. Will decided that he hated the man, and once he decided that, the feelings of irritation and rage were quick and fierce.

“So,” Lyra whispered, her hands resting on his shoulder blades and her chin angled up so she could talk as close to his ear as her height would allow. At their feet, Pan was reluctantly play-fighting with the weasel, who couldn’t seem to get enough of him. “I’m in a delicate situation, Lord Pyrrhos. You see, to finish my task, I need a certain book. There was only ever one made. It was handwritten and hidden away for quite some time.”

The man skimmed his hand slightly lower on her back. It was clearly only social norms that kept him from touching her inappropriately right then and there. Pan grumbled as the weasel nibbled at his ear. He was not enjoying this game in the slightest.

“Ah,” Lord Pyrrhos said. He spun Lyra around in a complete circle, bringing her back in closer to him than she had been before, so that the front of her body was nearly pressed completely against his. He leaned in and inhaled the smell of her hair. Will heard himself make an angry sort of sound that reminded him of Kirjava (or perhaps it was Kirjava who had made it.) “ _Alethiometer Sequences and Patterns_.”

Lyra feigned fascination. “How did you know that?”

He laughed. “Your skills are no secret, my lady. Rumor has it you’re the most advanced alethiometerist alive now.”

“Ah, there goes those rumors again,” Lyra teased. She reached up and played with the collar of his jacket. She looked up at him with doe-like eyes. “They’ll get you in trouble, you know.”

“Do you deny it?”

“No. I suppose I don’t. Though I must admit: I was worlds better when I was a girl.”

“Maybe in some ways. Maybe with the alethiometer.”

Lyra gave him a coy smile in response.

“I suppose you’re hoping I’ll give you the book,” Lord Pyrrhos mused. He spun Lyra again. This time, she leaned purposefully against the front of his body, allowing him to drag her closer til she was flush against him. Pan was suffering through the weasel’s increasing nips at his ears.

“I am hoping that you will _lend_ me the book,” corrected Lyra lowly. “Lend it to me for only a month and I shall return it in perfect condition.”

“Ah,” Lord Pyrrhos repeated softly. He smiled at Lyra. It seemed a bit amused. “And what shall I receive as payment?”

It was clearly the moment they’d both been building up to. Lyra kept her smile in place as she studied his face. He kept his in place, too. To a passerby, they might appear to be having a lovely conversation.

“The lender drafts the terms,” said Lyra, after their heavy, mutual pause. She looked up at him from under her lashes. “Begin our negotiations.”

His laugh was soft. “Oh, my lady. Has anyone ever told you that you are so like your mother?”

Will saw it, but he knew the man didn’t. Lyra’s eyes tightened for a moment, and her smile sagged, but she worked through the emotion with near perfection.

“If it were my mother asking for this book, how might she convince you?” Lyra asked. Will hadn’t been expecting that, and neither had the man. He had to take a moment to recollect his thoughts.

“I don’t know. One could never anticipate what Marisa Coulter might do at any given moment. I suppose she would…make it worth my while.”

“Then I shall do the same. Name your terms.”

Will’s heart was racing. This felt dangerous to him in a way he had never experienced before, a way he’d never anticipated Lyra would, either. He wanted to run over there and pull her out of the man’s greedy arms. But this was a dance, one that Lyra seemed confident performing, and he trusted her. Pan clearly did too, though Will knew just from looking at him that his heart was fluttering just as nervously and just as hard as Will’s was on Lyra’s behalf.

“I would like two things,” the man requested. He hadn’t needed much time to think: a bad sign. “The first is a demand.”

“What is this demand?”

“I want to know what you were doing in the Levant with Mr. Makepeace.”

A smile bloomed over Lyra’s face, radiant and bright. Will felt his own nervousness lessen. Crafting lies was what she did best. If this was the man's demand, she could meet it safely.

“Such easy terms. I can certainly do that, Lord Pyrrhos, because you are quick-minded and trustworthy, and I feel you are worthy of the truth. But I cannot do that here amongst all these people.”

Her response pleased Lord Pyrrhos to his bones. “Then we shall have to meet in a quieter place. My second demand is this: if this task you’ve been working towards is related to what I think it is, I want you to include me in it.”

Her response wasn’t so immediate or welcoming this time. She watched him with a calculating expression. “And if the task is nothing of the sort?”

He smiled. “Then we will have to reconvene, won’t we? I'm confident substitute terms can be agreed upon.”

Lyra paused for a moment. Will thought that Lyra probably sensed the danger for the first time, but he knew—realistically—that she’d probably felt it more keenly than he could imagine from the start. Brave to her very core, his Lyra.

“Yes, we will,” replied Lyra. “Here is how we will do this. We will meet somewhere quiet—”

“The Botanic Garden,” suggested Lord Pyrrhos.

This time, the way her smile tightened was clear even to the gullible man. Will had to wonder if the man had known...but, no, that was impossible. It had to have been a coincidence. Still-- Will’s heart lurched alongside Lyra’s.

“No. Not there. The coffee house on High Street. It’s ever so private if you go just before midday.”

Her innocent confidence won the lord over.  “And you’ll tell me what you were doing for two years in the Levant with a madman?”

She craned her head up and let her cheek rest lightly against Lord Pyrrhos’s jaw. The spell was back. Will caught himself envying the man senselessly, thinking about how soft the skin of her cheek must feel, how warm...“I will tell you everything. But you must bring the book. I _need_ it. Do you understand?”

“Better than you can imagine,” he breathed, his hands skimming down her back once more.

Pantalaimon was getting close to the end of his tether. He looked ready to bite the weasel. Right when Will thought he really would, Lyra took a step back from the man, putting distance between them.

“I will see you tomorrow,” she told him firmly.

He nodded. His gaze was sticky with desire as he watched her walk off. And Will—thankfully, oh, _thank you_ —followed along after her and Pan. She retreated back to the powder room she’d been in before. As soon as the door was shut, and Pan had checked to make sure they were alone, Lyra ripped the fancy pin from her hair with shaky hands, taking a few long strands of dark gold hair with it in her haste. She dropped it to the floor. 

“I will never feel clean again thanks to his awful dæmon and her creeping paws…” Pan stopped talking for the sake of doubling over and grooming himself irritably. Lyra was just as revolted, but she was being quieter about it. Will watched her trembling frame as she toed out of her shoes.

“He’s such a nasty old man,” she said hatefully. She pulled a long, cozy-looking overcoat on over her dress; it was worn in the elbows and didn’t match the setting at all, but it did fit her. She pulled her hair free from the collar. “I think we can do this, though, Pan. He seems easy to manipulate. And he has no idea that you can go far from me. We can meet him at the coffee house—I’ll tell him a riveting lie about the Levant and my doings there—and if he tries anything funny or tries to get out of giving us the book, you can come up from behind and take the book from his bag, and then…”

“His dæmon won’t take her teeth off me long enough for all that,” Pantalaimon grumbled.

Will thought that was a good point. Lyra did, too. “I didn’t think of that,” she admitted. She played with a ring on her middle finger. “What are the odds he was actually planning on handing it over with only a story and a promise in payment, anyway? I’m certain he’s got an ulterior motive. We’re just going to have to think on our feet.”

Pan looked uneasy. “I think he’s tricking us just like we’re tricking him somehow, Lyra. I don’t like it. And if his dæmon is anything to go by, I think I know what he wants, and so you shouldn’t have played that game that you were playing. It was _awful_ ,” he said with a delicate looking shudder.

Lyra gave him a sour look. “Pan, you’re fine. I’m the one with the real reason to complain if this ever went that far—”

“I can’t believe you’re even thinking like that!” cried Pan, disgusted. “He’s _dreadful_ , Lyra! _Dreadful_! I don’t approve!”

“I didn’t ask! And it’s not as if I’m fond of him in any way at all! But I have to have that book, Pan, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to get it! I can’t figure it out—what the alethiometer is telling me—and it’s _important_. It’s maybe the most important message yet. And we’re so close now. Sebastian’s machine has blocked Dust from escaping in every trial we’ve done; it’s ready to go near a window as soon as we can figure out a safe way to make one, or how to find the one natural opening that’s left somewhere out there, and we know there’s one _somewhere_ , we know the angels left one, ‘cause the alethiometer told me they did and it en’t going to _lie_ , only we can’t find it all on our own in this whole great world—we’d die before we found it— and if I can’t figure out where the alethiometer says it is then all that work we did with Sebastian will have been for nothing, and _Will_...we’ll never see him again— and all that hope—” she broke off, stricken yet unwavering. “If I can get that book it changes everything. I don’t know Lord Pyrrhos enough to know how difficult he’s going to be, but I know that he fancied my mother and I know how she dealt with difficult men, and I also know that she got anything she ever wanted. So if I have to play his game, I’ll find a way to win it.”

Pan shook his head, deeply bothered. “You won’t do it. You wouldn’t do that to us.”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” she repeated passionately, her chin tilted up stubbornly in a way so familiar that Will felt his heart stutter with affection. “And you can just run off somewhere and hide and whine about it if it has to happen if you want to; I won’t stop you. But I don’t think it will come to that. I truly don’t. I’ll break into his home and steal it from him before I let it.”

“Well, if it _did,_ me running off won’t make it any less awful for us,” Pan reminded her.

“Well, at least I wouldn’t have to listen to you nag me on top of everything else,” she shot back.  

“What do you want to be like _her_ for, anyway?” he shot at Lyra reproachfully. It was obvious who he meant.

“I don’t _ever_ want to be like her. But I can _pretend_ to be like her—I can lie and play like I am—if it means I can figure out the message and get to Will again.”

Pantalaimon made a hissing sound under his breath. There was a tense pause between the two. Finally, the dæmon said: “You know I wouldn’t leave you alone if it came to that. I would stay nearby to protect you.”

“I know,” said Lyra. She reached for a handkerchief and forcefully wiped off her lipstick. “Even that awful golden monkey never left my mother alone I bet. Though I wouldn’t ever compare you to that horrid thing. Oh, Pan—maybe you’re right. I feel so tired and worn, and yet I keep running towards it all blindly without thinking of anything that I’m running _through_ on my way to it _,_ I only know that I need to be there and—oh!”

She had turned around with the lipstick-stained handkerchief in hand, headed over towards the corner of the room that Will was watching from. And to his great surprise—with a shock that raced down his spine and made him shiver—he realized she was looking _directly_ at him, with a flood of emotion spreading over her expressive (beautiful) face.

Pantalaimon let out a shocked squeak. Lyra seemed frozen in place. Will didn’t understand what she was seeing, because he didn’t have a body, did he? He was standing in a toilet in his own world. But then he became aware of the sensation of thick, plush carpet beneath his feet, and without knowing how to do it (but doing it anyway), he glanced down slowly. Only to see his own feet set on the powder room floor. He looked up quickly. He and Lyra exchanged an identical look that was almost comical, shock and deep emotion rooting them in place. Finally, Lyra inhaled sharply.

“Will—” she said, and she shot forward after that, and he made to do the same thing, his heart pounding so hard it made him feel a bit sick, his arms lifted to hold her finally, finally, _finally_ —

But he had taken off in a sprint too quickly. With a jarring tug to his heart, he tumbled backwards, falling back into consciousness within his own world to find himself laying on the pub toilet floor, a stranger peering nervously over his supine body.

“You all right, mate?” he asked. He stuck a calloused hand out to help Will up. Will grasped it automatically and let the man yank him to his feet. The stranger clapped Will on the shoulder as soon as he was upright. “Bit too many?”

“Yeah,” Will muttered, struggling to hide how close he was to tears. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to hide beneath his covers with Kirjava. Since when was he such a coward?

He didn’t even think about it. He wandered out of the toilet, dazed, dropped enough money on the table to cover his and Jade’s drinks, and then he gave her a scattered excuse for fleeing. She watched on as he hurried out, her expression stricken and confused.

Will’s hand was shaking so hard that it took him three tries to unlock his flat. Kirjava was already home and waiting for him when he walked in.

“We were there,” Kirjava said at once.

Will dropped his keys and coat right to the floor.

“Lyra _mustn’t_ involve herself with that awful man,” Kirjava said.

Will buried his face in his hands.

“We have to help her," she whispered.

His fingers dug into his thick, dark hair.

“Will!”

He dropped his hands and looked at her. He could hardly breathe. “I think I’m mad, Kirjava.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond. Heartsick and drunk, he stumbled his way to his bathroom, where he stood in the shower—on the brink of tears—til the water ran cold.

* * *

 

“You’re not mad. And here’s how I know,” she began.

They were not the words Will expected to be greeted with first thing in the morning. He looked over at his dæmon, still half asleep.

“One,” Kirjava began, “these visions would be _rubbish_ fantasies. If you were truly mad, and you were truly making yourself see it, you’d be seeing things much more pleasant I’d imagine.”

But seeing Lyra at all was far more pleasant than anything Will could imagine. It was the wildest, most unattainable fantasy there was.

“Haven’t you noticed that it only happens when I’m either extremely ill or drunk? What does that make you think of?” _Mum on her bad days. Things are always worse for her when she’s tired or hazy._

“And haven’t you noticed how real they are?” Kirjava challenged. “We don’t have _that_ good an imagination, Will.”

It was too early for this, and his head was spinning with dozens of images that he’d had no hope of properly processing the night before. For once, he had no idea what to do. If it were real—if he wasn’t crazy—there wasn’t much for him to do but wait and hope that Lyra could get to him safely.

Kirjava was, of course, on the same wavelength.

“We need to figure out how to work it, whatever it is we’ve been doing. You should have tried to talk to her last night—”

“I was in no state to do that. I didn’t even believe it was real.”

“We have to figure out how we became solid last time, too. What did we do differently?”

“Nothing,” he said. He threw his arm over his head and yawned up at the ceiling. He was drifting towards sleep again. “I can’t control it. I only know that I felt like I shouldn’t push it. The moment I acted with no restraint and tried to run towards her, it broke, whatever it was bridging me to her.”

“Then you must be more careful. Try again.”

He shied away from the idea. “I can’t.”

“You can. You’re half asleep. That’s got to be as good as having a fever or being drunk.” Kirjava set her paw on his face. Will squinted up at her multi-colored face. “I know. It hurts. It’s okay that it hurts. We have to…we have to acknowledge that, and not try to push it away or run from it, but rather accept it, just like with the knife.”

But the idea that this was all just a delusion in his mind was so terrifying to him that he nearly couldn’t function with it. To have gone this long getting accustomed to being without her, to the traumatic knowledge that he would _never_ see her again, only to see her and get false hope that they could one day be reunited…and then to potentially find out that it was all just in his imagination…

His eyes burned.

“I can’t bear it if it’s not real. Don’t ask that of me.”

“But it _is_ ,” Kirjava persisted. She jumped from the bed only to return a minute or so later. She jumped back on the bed, walked up to Will, and let something soft and fragrant fall onto his face. He reached up instinctively and grabbed the piece of fabric. It felt like silk, and he could feel the rough outline of embroidery stitching around the edges. He opened his eyes. The sight of the ivory handkerchief made his heart lurch and throb. He shook it out. There, on the bottom right corner, in brilliant silver thread: _St Sophia’s College_. And there, nearly in the middle, a blurred apricot-colored lipstick smudge.

His limbs tingled as he remembered this handkerchief in her hands last night (pressing against her lips last night.) He sat up slowly. He touched his finger to the lipstick stain. He had seen her make that stain with his own eyes, first as she dabbed lightly at her lipstick, then as she wiped it off completely. He had watched her do it, and now, somehow, he was holding that handkerchief in his hand.

It meant two things:

One: he might not be mad.

Two: he was more than a traveling consciousness in her world. If Kirjava could grab something solid and bring it back, she had to have been solid at least for a moment. And if she had been solid, that meant she was _there_. And if she was there—and he was there—then that meant…

“ _Not_ mad,” Kirjava said. She sounded quite pleased with herself. “I was quicker than you, and for some reason, it doesn’t make us fall back into our own world when _I_ run forward. I was reaching for Pan, but my claw got caught on this instead, and I realized I brought it back with me.”

“But my body has been here every time I’ve seen her. So how can our bodies be _there_ too?”

This Kirjava had no answer to. Will would have given anything then to see his father just once more, to ask him questions he had never known to ask in the unfairly limited time he’d had with him. There was no one else who could help him. And so there was no one.

“You need to try again,” Kirjava pressed, just as desperate to see them again as Will was.

With his hand closed around the handkerchief, he relaxed back against the pillows and closed his eyes. He did what he’d done the previous time: he began by simply imagining her and what she might be doing. But this time, it required creative effort, and it was more like he was telling a story to himself in his head. He didn’t slip away; he remained rooted in his world, idly picturing—with no real clarity or detail—that Lyra was sleeping peacefully, warm and content in bed, Pan curled around her throat.

“It’s no use. I’m too awake,” realized Will, and he wasn’t sure how he knew that for certain, but he knew that he was right.

* * *

 

In fact, Lyra was very far from peacefully asleep.

She was on the square roof of Jordan College, lying flat on her back as the sun rose with soft, romantic bursts of color over the horizon, the alethiometer clutched in her stiff, tired hands. Pan had passed out from exhaustion only an hour prior and was snoozing atop the mock battlements, leaving Lyra alone in the cool night, her heart beating like wings against her ribcage, never slowing.

“Compass…candle…bull…beehive…globe…elephant…compass…candle…bull…beehive…globe…elephant…”

She was hoping if she kept repeating the symbols to herself while staring hard at the alethiometer that she’d be struck by sudden inspiration. But no magical, easy progress lent itself to her. All she knew was what she had already worked out from her years and years of studying, and even that was world’s away from the true and easy way she had once been able to read the instrument. It made her heartsick. A lot of things did these days.

In the dim, building light of the new day, she decided to ask the alethiometer something new. She twisted and turned the dials, so that the three hands were resting on the wild man, the walled garden, and the apple. She closed her eyes. She washed her mind clean of anything but her question— _Is he still looking for me, too?—_ and underneath that question there were two levels of other questions (is he okay? Will I see him again?). She ignored the hard, damp surface of the roof beneath her shoulder blades, the cool morning air tearing right through her thin, stained dress, the rumble of hunger in her gut. Nothing was as important as her question and she would lay there underneath the Jordan sunrise ‘til she got her answer.

She noted the symbols and their sequences at the back of her mind without once pulling herself from her trance. _Elephant, bird, hourglass (two times), thunderbolt (four). Elephant, bird, hourglass (two times), thunderbolt (four)._ She had practiced thinking about each symbol while not pulling herself from her necessary mindset so many times that it was nearly effortless now, though compared to the graceful way she had once read the instrument, it was clunky and awkward.

She shivered back to the rooftop scene once she’d gotten her answer. She lowered the alethiometer to her warm cheek and held it there for a moment, like a lover warming another’s hand, her heart still fluttering and pounding away. Sometimes (like now) the answers were clear to her at once, and it was like a love note from all her tireless years of studying. And sometimes (like with the question she had asked before this, the answer she was still working on deciphering) it was long, painful work, with little reward and many frustrated tears. 

The answer she received now was welcomed.  _Will has not forgotten. Will is coming for you too, though in his own way that is separate from yours. In time—a short time, now, compared to how long it’s been—you will be reunited, and the occasion will be one of the most vivid and striking in your entire life, and—_ the alethiometer had seemed very adamant about this bit— _it is good._

There were tiny details she knew she needed to iron out. For example, it had referred to the fourth level of the thunderbolt, meaning a striking, powerful moment in a person’s life, but Lyra had gotten the feeling in her gut that the alethiometer had meant _both_ their lives, but it had been certain in its usage of a single meaning “life”, rather than “lives”, leaving Lyra to wonder if she had read it wrong or if it was really revealing something else to her, too, that she had overlooked.

But she would deal with the specifics later. She understood the larger picture, and with a deep sigh of relief, she finally set the alethiometer down to rest on her stomach. For the first time since she’d gotten a glimpse of Will hours earlier, she felt her heart begin to settle. She and Pantalaimon had been frantic for hours; she had sprinted back to Jordan barefoot in the pitch black and had spent three hours interrogating the alethiometer.

 _Was that really Will?_ she’d asked.

 _Yes_ , it had told her.

_How?_

_He has begun a type of interworld traveling that he has been working towards bit by bit for over a decade. He is very far from adept, but every day he will improve if only he realizes the true nature of what he is doing._

The answer had sent her spinning. She shot messily-formed question after messily-formed question at the symbol reader. _Was he really there physically? Would he be solid if I were to touch him? Can he hear me when I speak to him? Is it harmful or dangerous for him? How often can he do it? Does he know how to control it? Is it possible for me to call to him? How can I help? Can I learn to do it, too?_

_Has he been happy?_

More than half her questions were given answers she couldn’t decipher, leading her to assume that either her questions had been incorrectly coded, or the answers were much more complex than she had anticipated. She knew the answers to the important bits, though: it was really Will, he was alive out there, he remembered her, he was _looking for her_. Everything else she could figure out in time.

Presently, she was trying very hard not to fall asleep. It wasn’t always the best move to nap on the roof; birds often gave one a wake-up call that left much to be desired. But it had been a very long time since she’d slept—over twenty-four hours, definitely—and exhaustion was catching up with her. There were so many things she needed to do: she needed to figure out how to get Lord Pyrrhos’s book, how to contact Will, and how to find the only open window between her world and Will’s. But she felt herself dropping off, lulled by the distant birdsong and rustling of the trees, and for one perfect moment, she felt like a child again.

* * *

 

But she was not a child. And the world was forever changed for her because of that fact, for better or for worse.

“I don’t like this,” Pan hissed uneasily. He darted out ahead of her on the pavement, forcing her to slow her pace for a moment. “Lyra, stop!”

She couldn’t stop. “It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s not! We can’t trust him! Meeting him _alone_ in his _home_ —I think you’re mad!”

 _Maybe I am¸_ she thought, but she bit her tongue. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“We can’t! We can do no such thing! He’s older than us and bigger than us, and you went and did what you did—teasing him and putting him on like that when you know what people say about him and young women—and—and…” Pan was trembling with indignation. “You’re not Mrs. Coulter!”

“And I thought you didn’t want me to be,” Lyra reminded him dryly. She stepped around him and sped up again. He increased his speed to keep up with her.

“I don’t! That’s—that’s my _point_!” gasped Pan.

Lyra stopped abruptly. Her dæmon came to a sudden standstill as well, lurching forward for a moment. Lyra kneeled down right in the middle of the pavement so they could look each other full in the face. Pan flowed up to sit in her lap, his little paws pressed urgently to her collarbones.

“Pan,” began Lyra, forcing her voice to remain calm. “We’ve been doing this all our life. Since we were little. It’s always been dangerous. It was dangerous when we hid in the Retiring Room. It was dangerous when we slid through the ventilation in Bolvangar. It was dangerous when we fought all those kids in Cittàgazze, when we went down into the Land of the Dead, when we infiltrated that…that _cult_ in the Levant—”

“And look at what nearly happened each time! We nearly got separated and killed in Bolvangar! We nearly got killed in Cittàgazze! We nearly lost each other forever in the Land of the Dead! We nearly got stoned to death in the Levant!”

“Yes, well, none of that actually happened, did it?” Lyra asked lightly. “We made it out all right.”

“But that doesn’t mean we will every time! And I don’t think you know these games you’re playing now as well as you think you do.”

“Sure I do,” Lyra dismissed. She helped Pan up so he could drape around her neck. She resumed walking. “It’s the same game I always play. Only I have more tools at my disposal now. I’ll get in there, and I’ll lie, and I’ll be very clever, and then we’ll get the book, and then we’ll never have to see that awful old man or his creepy dæmon ever again.”

“Maybe. Or maybe this will be the time that we lose. We don’t have anybody to help us, Lyra. It’s just us.”

An unexpected wave of loneliness crashed over Lyra. She fought it tooth and nail.

“That’s not true,” she said stubbornly. “We’ve got Iorek and Serafina and Dame Hannah and our friends from St Sophia’s. And Will. We’ve got him, too.”

It made her shiver with delight to be able to include him on that list. Her heart began racing again.

“And I don’t see them around anywhere, do you?” Pantalaimon challenged. “You didn’t even tell anybody where we were going. Nobody could hope to help us even if we needed it, even if we didn’t come back.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re not going to need it.” Lyra stroked Pan soothingly. “We’ll get in, flatter him a bit, fluster him a bit more, and then we’ll get our hands on that book, and we’ll go.”

She had met with Lord Pyrrhos two days after their meeting at the ball. Their coffee house conversation had been tense and calculating. Lyra had lied skillfully, telling Lord Pyrrhos that she had been in the Levant working on some research—to help get her postgrad qualifications to teach at Jordan—and that her ultimate goal was to study the effects of the Church’s teachings on the economic systems of Brytain and the Isles and elsewhere around the world. She had told him he was quite welcome to accompany her to Arabia the next time she went to evaluate the societal and monetary impact the Church’s presence had on the region, particularly on children. She knew it was a clever lie; it allowed her a bit of secretiveness—because the subject was taboo enough to potentially get her in trouble—but did not come close to revealing what she had _really_ been doing.

Lord Pyrrhos had seemed to believe her, but he hadn’t been very forthcoming. He had showed up to the coffee house without the book, much to Lyra’s chagrin, and had told her that she must come to his home to look at it. His excuse had been its value; he didn’t want it to leave his sight until he knew she was “trustworthy”. Pan thought he had ulterior motives. Lyra was certain that he did. But she didn’t care. She just knew she needed that book and that somehow, she would have it.

“It’ll be _fine_ ,” Lyra repeated, as they stood outside Lord Pyrrhos’s door. She stroked Pan’s fur soothingly. “You’ve just got to put up with his dæmon for a bit, that’s all. I know it’s not fun; it's not fun for me either. But soon we’ll have our book, and we’ll know how to find Will and Kirjava, and then this’ll all be over.”

With Pantalaimon grumbling into her hair, Lyra knocked once on the mahogany door.

She wasn’t surprised when the door opened within seconds of her knocking. Standing there, in a three-piece suit, his dæmon jumping around his feet excitedly, was Lord Pyrrhos. He grinned impishly at the sight of Lyra; she suddenly wished she hadn’t put so much effort into making herself look decent (she’d spent ages in the bathtub scrubbing off the dirt and grime from her climb onto the roof. She should’ve left her knees and hands filthy and seen how he liked _that_.)

“Come inside, Lady Belacqua,” Lord Pyrrhos greeted, stepping back to invite Lyra into his home. She took a moment to master her instinct to flee. This was not the time or place for cautiousness.

“You’re very kind,” said Lyra, feigning sincerity. She had learned a lot about faking politeness while at St. Sophia’s, though it took every bit of her learned grace to keep from scoffing at the title _Lady Belacqua_ and correcting him. She hadn’t used the name Belacqua since the end of the war, and she certainly wasn’t a lady by any stretch of the imagination. Had they met under normal circumstances, when she wasn’t trying to get something from the man, she would have stared him down and made him call her by her proper name.

Lyra walked into the echoing front hall. It was adorned from floor to ceiling with expensive looking objects of every sort, most obviously priceless or close to it. Lyra pretended to be appreciating a statue of the Madonna naked while really taking careful notice of every visible exit. Pan, she noticed, was doing the same while he bravely endured the weasel’s harassment.

“Shall we?” Lord Pyrrhos offered, gesturing out towards the sitting room.

“Certainly.”

Lyra walked beside the man like an equal, though she was beginning to feel very small. His home was grand and spoke volumes of his influence in their society. She was just now beginning to appreciate the seriousness of Pan’s earlier warnings.

She entertained his conversation for a full hour before getting impatient. She had drunk two glasses of Brantwijn at Lord Pyrrhos’s insistence—after Pantalaimon had stealthily sniffed at it to make sure it smelled normal—and suffered through a lengthy conversation about the merits of shifting away from physical currency before she finally lost her patience.

“Lord Pyrrhos, I do so love this opportunity to talk so candidly with you. I find you very easy to talk to.”

Did she imagine his cheeks pinking slightly? She couldn’t help but feel pleased. Pan nipped lightly at her ankle, annoyed.

“And I you, my lady,” Lord Pyrrhos agreed eagerly. He took another sip of his drink. “I must say I doubted that you would actually accept my invitation. Most young, unmarried women would balk at the idea of meeting a man alone in his home.”

Pan nipped harder at her ankle. She didn’t need him to. She had caught the sudden sting of danger in the air.

“Well,” she began (a bit slower this time, carefully), “I am difficult to frighten.”

“I’d imagine you would be,” he said. Lyra wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He took another sip from the tulip glass. “I expected as much from you. Your mother was…well, to every side she had her faults, but no one could deny the woman’s power. And your father…! Why to think they tried to hide you away! A combination like that was bound to be…electric.”

Lyra maintained her warm, polite smile, but her stomach clenched. _Electric_. Now how would a man from her world know that word? It was _electric_ in Will’s, but she had never heard it referred to as anything but anbaric in hers.

“Electric?” Lyra pressed innocently, her eyes widened just slightly. “I suppose I shall take that as a compliment, my lord, though I'm not certain I know what you mean.”

“Oh, darling, let’s not pretend you’re any less than you are,” he said, his own polite smile plastered stubbornly in place. “You do yourself a disservice. Own your experiences. Own your identity.”

She could feel Pan’s anxiety crawling all over her. She didn’t have time to calculate what the man might know or what his angle might be. She could only go by her gut.

“You must forgive me. You see, I haven’t heard that term in such a long while, and the years make everything so hazy. I was only a girl during the war…whatever it was that my father was doing—well, I’ll admit the finer details were lost on me. I was just trying to survive.”

She inflated her eyes slightly, hoping to look every bit as innocent as she’d once been. His smile grew.

“Now you do _me_ a disservice. Do you think I would ask you to my home unless I knew everything there is to know about you?”

Lyra hesitated. She threw caution to the wind. She let her smile melt away as if it’d never been present to begin with. “I actually did think that. I see now that I was wrong.”

“Quite.”

She leaned forward carefully. “So what is it that you want, Lord Pyrrhos? Let’s be frank with one another.”

He set his glass down on the table. “It’s simple: when you succeed in finding a way to bridge the worlds together again safely—which I have no doubt that you will—I want to accompany you. I have seen all there is to see in this world. Half the greatest wonders I’ve either owned at one point or currently own. From the moment I heard about what Lord Asriel had done…opened up the heavens…I knew I wanted to step into that world and explore it, to see things I never had before, but I never got the chance. It was all over before it’d even begun for me. And there at the heart of it: you. A girl. Why?”

Lyra shifted slightly. “Poor luck, I suspect.”

“No. I don’t imagine that for a moment. And I know, if something that extraordinary happens again, you’ll be nearby when it does. I want to be part of it.”

It was obvious what role he wanted to play in her life by the way the weasel dæmon was stroking Pan’s fur.

Lyra made her voice purposefully quiet and sad. “If you had any idea the trauma I went through you wouldn’t assume I’d _ever_ go searching for another world ever again.”

He smiled. It was a strange, unexpected response. “I don’t doubt the entire ordeal was traumatizing. But what of the boy?”

Lyra’s heart actually trembled. It was a weird sensation that made her cough, as if her heart had just lurched into her neighboring lungs. “Sorry?”

“There is much rumored talked about this war, and when you’re spoken of, there’s always talk about _the boy_. But where is he? He didn’t die; the Church’s side would have told everybody that. He wasn’t taken prisoner; they would have put on a great big show of trying to put him on trial for heresy, and probably also you, once they could prove through him that you’d been involved, not that they would've had the power to succeed. And you haven’t been seen with anybody that would fit his description. The only boys you’ve been seen with are rough, rebellious things without an ounce of genuine mental substance to them. They would hardly be fit to take on the Authority.”

Lyra didn’t say a word and she didn’t let her expression change. But her stomach felt queasy.

“So,” Lord Pyrrhos concluded. “He must have gotten left behind in the other worlds. And all the talk that surrounded you and him…would I be wrong to assume that you were close?”

The back of Lyra’s eyes burned. For a moment, she was sucked back into the web of time. She remembered the sting of pain as her and Will’s noses slammed together during their very last kiss. The very last time she had touched him. The very last time she had seen him. She remembered how warm and heavy his body was all the nights they curled around each other in her bed on the boat back to England, terribly innocent in their desire to hold each other at the time, though many years later Lyra would remember those moments with longing and wish they hadn’t been so innocent.

She didn’t know what her face was betraying, but it had told Lord Pyrrhos something. He nodded. “I thought as much.” He stood abruptly. “You are welcome to refer to my book and use it as often as you want. On one condition.”

Lyra waited.

“You remain here at all times. Forgive me, but I don’t trust any promise or assurance from you that you’ll take me along once you figure out how to go there; I think I’m right to assume that if I gave you this book you’d get your answers and disappear before I heard a word from you again. So you may use it as much as you want—as long as you remain here where I can see you.”

Claustrophobia set in even at the mere idea. At her feet, Pantalaimon snapped at the weasel, finally having endured enough.

“Remain here as in _live_ here?” Lyra clarified.

He smiled. “Certainly. And would that really be so awful? I can offer you much, Lady Belacqua. I have experience and skills beyond your years, not to mention a vast collection of useful objects you can’t find anywhere else. We shall start a partnership.”

 _I en’t a lady_ , she almost snapped, her irritation unwinding her composure. She held it together—barely.

“I should need my things if I’m to live here,” she pointed out.

His smile only grew. “Certainly. You’re free to go and retrieve them. But I will not show you the book until you’re ready to stay here.”

Lyra looked down at Pan. He looked close to fighting the weasel. A break was necessary.

“Then we will return in the hour with our things,” she decided. She needed time to talk with Pan and work out a plan.

* * *

 

“I refuse! I _refuse_!”

Pantalaimon was causing such a fuss on the walk home that many people passing by gave him odd looks and Lyra accusatory ones, clearly thinking _that woman needs to control her dæmon._ Lyra ignored them.

“We’re not going to, Pan, calm down!” Lyra exclaimed. “Do you really think I’m going to let myself get imprisoned there with _him_?”

“I don’t know what you’d do anymore! I don’t know!” cried Pan passionately. Lyra could feel his revulsion and fear. For a second, his words stung her.

“Well, I don’t know yet, either,” she admitted. “That’s why we’ve got to make a plan. I was thinking that we could pack a bag and go there as if we’re intending on staying, and then when he finally shows us the book, you can grab it and make a run for it.”

“This is assuming the weasel lets go of me long enough for me to get to the book, and it’s assuming the man doesn’t then hold you as an actual prisoner once I’ve escaped with the book.”

Lyra pictured the man in her head. “I think I could probably fight him off and make a run for it. I know of at least five exits now.”

Pan clearly thought it was a horrible plan, but he also didn’t have much else to offer. They briefly considered drawing it out by having Lyra stay there a day or so, to lull Lord Pyrrhos into a sense of security to hopefully lower his defenses, but Lyra didn’t much want to be stuck there come nightfall.

 _What would Will do_? she asked herself on the walk back. He would have let her do the lying to get her hands on the book, and once they were in the room with it, he would’ve cut right into the room, grabbed the book, jumped back out, and closed the door before Pyrrhos could follow after them. That’s what he would have done. And it would have worked.

But she didn’t have Will and he didn’t have the knife. She had herself, Pan, and the alethiometer. She ducked into a bookshop toilet to confer with the alethiometer once, but her question _how do I get the book?_ was answered by a confusing sequence of symbols that Lyra would need days and hundreds of pages of notes to decipher. Frustrated and disappointed, she shoved the alethiometer down into her shoulder bag.

She mastered her fear by the time she was on Lord Pyrrhos’s doorstep. He answered immediately as he’d done before. This time, she stepped right into his home before he prompted. This made him smile wider.

“Okay,” Lyra said bravely. She held up her bag. “Show me to my room and then I would like to look at the book and get to work.”

“Certainly,” Lord Pyrrhos said.

He walked her up the stairs to a room so grand and magnificent that Lyra feared it was his own. She didn’t ask and she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she set her bag by the door—glad she’d had the foresight to pack it with old socks and blankets so she could leave it behind once she fled—and looked expectantly at the man. After meeting her steady gaze for a long, oddly uncomfortable moment, he inclined his head towards the hall.

“The study is this way. I’ve already set the book out for you.”

Lyra felt Pantalaimon rub along her legs as they walked, quick, anxious movements—though perhaps he was just trying to keep out of the weasel’s touch. Lyra pretended not to notice as Lord Pyrrhos’s hand brushed once or twice at her hip as they walked side-by-side, tactfully pretending it was a simple accident. Her teachers at St. Sophia’s would have been so astonished to see her now, entirely poised and diplomatic (and _clean_!) after all the tireless and mostly fruitless effort they’d poured into her over the long years of her education.

“Here we are,” Pyrrhos said, coming to a stop outside of a heavy wooden door. It had what looked like griffins etched just above the doorknobs, and in the low hall light, Lyra was momentarily and ridiculously afraid to touch them. Pyrrhos opened the door for her and held it ajar, allowing her a moment to process the huge, marvelous room. It was grander than any museum she’d ever seen, and she had seen many of them. Lyra stepped dumbfounded into the room and looked up at the cathedral-like ceilings. Pyrrhos laughed behind her.

“Is it to your liking?”

“Quite,” said Lyra, a bit breathlessly.

“Not a horrid place to live, is it?”

This she did not answer, choosing instead to turn to examine a nearby tower of books. Pan darted ahead of her quickly, nearly forgetting in his excitement and eagerness to flee the weasel that nobody was supposed to know how far he could go from Lyra. Lyra feigned a sharp, pained intake of breath, reminding Pan that their distance should be getting uncomfortable, and her dæmon obediently stopped at once and gave his own feigned cry. He turned and sprinted back to her waiting arms. Lyra cradled him to her chest and leaned down to press her face against his fur, pretending to kiss his furry face, only to whisper: _Find the nearest exit._

He responded with a deep, contented rumbling. Lyra let him go again and turned to find Pyrrhos watching her with a carefully amused expression.

“How old were you both?” he asked.

Lyra arched an eyebrow. “Sorry?”

“When he settled. How old were you both?”

It wasn’t an all-together _rude_ question, but Lyra had never heard it asked before in the polite circles she’d been shoved into during her time at St. Sophia’s. People sometimes asked what forms one’s dæmon had tried out before settling, or how a human felt about their dæmon’s final shape, but nobody ever outright asked how old one was when it had changed for the last time. The information might be offered up in friendly conversation, but it was never asked by a near-stranger. Lyra didn’t know, but she felt maybe the aversion to the question was because it was revealing quite a lot about the person.

“Fourteen,” she lied smoothly. She arched her eyebrow higher. “And you?”

“Thirteen. That’s funny.”

“What is funny?”

“They say that children’s dæmons settle sooner now than they used to. I heard of a child whose dæmon settled at seven years old.”

“How sad,” commented Lyra passively. She didn’t like the conversation topic. It made her skin crawl, though she wasn't sure why. “This is a lovely room…there’s so much here. How might one find one little book inside all this grandeur?”

“By walking just this way,” he commanded, gesturing towards a far window, and Lyra followed his lead.

He walked her over to a sturdy, hand-carved desk. She knew at once which book was hers: it was laying open, waiting, its handwritten pages yellowed by age in the lamplight. Lyra felt her heart quicken. She longed to run over to it at once and touch it, but she knew she had to take this slow.

“It _is_ a tiny little thing,” she said, and it was. It was thinner than a matchbook, though the calligraphy inside was cramped and narrow. She clutched her shoulder bag closer to her body. “I should like to study it now if you don’t mind. I need quiet.”

“Certainly. I can give you quiet,” he said.

She sat down smoothly at the desk, but to her chagrin, he did not leave the room. She watched from the corner of her vision as he pulled another chair over, setting it down right beside hers, so close that his arm nearly brushed hers when they were sitting side-by-side. She gave him a sidelong look.

“Forgive me, Lord Pyrrhos, but you must realize this requires every ounce of my concentration.”

“Then I shall do my best not to distract you,” he responded. He pulled a different book off the desk and opened it on his lap, turning his focus to it at once. Or so he pretended. Lyra glanced down at their feet and saw his weasel dæmon was still captivated by Pan. Poor Pantalaimon was allowing her to play curiously with his paws, though he looked on edge, and Lyra could feel their shared impatience and revulsion.

There was no way she was going to be able to focus with Lord Pyrrhos sitting right there. She might as well have come here for nothing if this was the only chance she’d get to study the book. She shifted impatiently in her seat like an antsy schoolgirl, crossing and uncrossing her ankles and trying her hardest to make the handwriting on the pages make sense, but she could hear his heavy breathing beside her and he seemed to lean closer and closer to her with each passing movement. She turned the flimsy, age-worn pages of the book and tried to think up a way to get him to leave, but it was no use: she knew from his intrigued, rapt sideways glances towards her that he had planned this.

She had reluctantly begun to form some reckless and unpleasant plans when she saw movement from the corner of her eye. She looked up from the book, at first thinking that Pan had managed to slip away from the weasel, but she could still feel him trying to hide behind her ankles from beneath the desk. She set her hand down on the opened book to hold it open and looked out over the desk towards the wall in front of them, some twenty or so feet away. She saw it again a second later: a brief, colorful flash in the air, gone as quickly as it’d arrived. She wanted to tell Pan so he could go investigate, but there was no opportunity to with Lord Pyrrhos sitting right beside her.

She watched for a few more moments.

“Do you see something that intrigues you?” Pyrrhos asked suddenly. He had noticed her glance.

“Oh, no, I’m only thinking,” Lyra reassured him at once. She looked back down at her book, though she shot quick, curious looks out from underneath her eyelashes every few seconds. After a minute passed without seeing anything again, she decided she’d probably imagined it, and she looked down at her book. Only to see a hand lying just beside hers where no hand had been seconds prior. A man's hand. And it was missing two fingers.

She cried aloud, loud enough that Lord Pyrrhos jumped.

“What? What on earth is it, Lyra? Is everything okay?!”

Lyra—her heart pounding so hard that it felt like a small creature trembling away—looked reluctantly from the hand towards Lord Pyrrhos. He hadn’t noticed anything: he was looking at her like she was mad. So Lyra turned at once with a quick, panicked movement of her head and looked back at the hand, tracing her eyes up the wrist, forearm, bicep, shoulder—by the time her eyes had reached this point, there were no doubts in her mind or her heart who it was, but she still felt the air sucked from her lungs when her eyes fell on his face.

Her lips rounded to say _Will_ , but before she could utter the first sound of his name, she felt Pan press his nails into her ankle. And then she felt—with a splash of heat to her cheeks and neck—the brush of different fur against her ankle, this fur thicker and fluffier than Pan’s, and she knew at once that it was Kirjava. She felt her legs tremble, and because she had yet to drop her eyes from Will’s, she watched as his darkened with a strange, soul-reaching desire, too.

She wanted to stare and obsess over every single detail of his face, every single facet of change time had wrought, every single difference there was. She wanted to leap over the desk at him and drag him so hard into her embrace that it would feel for a moment like they were becoming one. She wanted to press her lips to his jaw—stronger now than it had been, and dark with stubble, and _oh_ , that sight made her feel all sorts of unexpected ways inside—and kiss every space of skin she could find, she wanted to—

But there was no time. She was pulled from her stupor as Pan flowed up into her arms and to her neck. He buried his face into her hair and hissed: _They can’t see them—Pyrrhos and his dæmon can’t see Will and Kirjava, I mean. Lyra, he can’t come any closer—Kirjava said there’s this…this tug, and it yanks him back into his own world if he loses control over himself, and we can’t run at him, either, because he’ll only slip back, and then he’ll be gone, but we need him to—_

“What’s that your dæmon is whispering?” Lord Pyrrhos asked suddenly, a strange, possessive edge to his tone. It was another question that simply wasn’t asked. What a woman and her dæmon spoke about was no one’s business. Lyra heard a hiss that sounded distinctly irritated and knew it hadn’t come from Pan.

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand,” Lyra told him, trying with all her might to sound nonchalant. But her eyes were still on Will and so she might as well have been trying to sound nonchalant while drowning. The emotion in her chest had surged up and choked her. Her words were shaky and unstable because of it. “Sorry, I was just…I was…I…I’ve…”

At once, as Lyra continued looking deep into Will’s intense, burning gaze, so much more powerful and imposing now that he was a man rather than a boy, she understood. And he understood, too. And that understanding flowed between them like a shared breath. He reached his hand—the same hand that had once been injured by the subtle knife—over and, very carefully, with no more pressure than a strong breeze might make against her skin, he brushed the back of hers.

Lyra’s fingers automatically curled in so that she was making a fist. Blood surged to her cheeks, reddening her expression, and at once she was overwhelmed with the desire—no, the _need_ —to throw herself at Will, to find home again in his arms, to—

Pan was frantically scolding her by tugging hard at her hair. It got her attention.

“What’s wrong with your dæmon?” Pyrrhos demanded, growing visibly suspicious.

And Lyra knew what to do. Will nodded once. With a deep, steadying breath, she dropped her eyes from his and pulled her hand from the book. From the corner of her eye, she saw as Will began to slide his fingers underneath the book cover bit-by-bit, trying not to move it enough that Pyrrhos noticed it being moved.

Lyra did what Lyra did best. She lied. “I’m sorry, I’m…oh, I’m so silly!”

It wasn’t hard to find the tears when she needed them. Her departure from Will had left her heart so bruised that she had, from that moment, been able to sob with abandon whenever the situation required it. She channeled that now, letting herself double over at the waist, hot fears flowing freely into her lap, her sorrow even more hysterical thanks to her rampant emotions.

Pyrrhos touched her shoulders, her back, her spine, her hair. “Whatever is the matter?!”

She buried her face in her hands. “I-I’ve been trying—oh, I can’t _believe_ I’m telling you this, you _mustn’t_ tell anybody else, you _mustn’t!_ ” she looked over at him as if to make sure he was agreeing with her, but really she was checking Will’s progress from the corner of her eye. He had managed the slide the book off the desk and was holding it uncertainly. Lyra wondered if he even knew how to get back to his world. Would he be able to take the book with him? Everything relied on that.

“I wouldn’t tell a soul,” Pyrrhos said silkily, absolutely reveling in her nakedness. His hand brushed her lower spine. From the edges of her vision, Lyra saw Will go rigid, but Kirjava herded his focus just as Pan had done to Lyra.

She had to press forward. “Well, I…I asked the alethiometer about my parents. It’s—the truth is—all this time—I’ve just been trying to find out what really happened to them! I never got the chance to ask and it _torments_ me, Lord Pyrrhos! It _torments me_!” she let a fresh wave of sorrow overtake her. “So I’ve been working so dreadfully hard all this time to try and find out what happened, and just now…just now…I realized what the alethiometer has been trying to tell me all along!”

Pyrrhos was trembling with excitement over this turn of events, though if it was over the information she was dangling in front of him or her own vulnerability, she wasn’t sure.

“Yes?” he pressed eagerly.

“It says…it told me…they were pulled down into the depths of the universe itself! Falling for eternity! _Oh, Lord Pyrrhos_!”

With a fresh sob, she turned and forced herself to fold into his embrace.

She cried and cried into his chest and tolerated his wandering hands as she did so, up until the moment Pan whispered: _they’re gone_.

Like a light had been flipped—save her teary face and swollen eyes—Lyra sat up in her seat. She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hands.

“Well,” she told him, trembling. “You know the truth now. And I have my answer. And it was ever so kind of you to let me use your—hey!”

She’d turned back around to look at the book as she referenced it, but the desk was empty. Lord Pyrrhos jumped to his feet at once.

“Where did it go?!” he demanded.

“I…I dunno! I was just sat there in your arms, I didn’t see anything!” she cried, outwardly just as confused and disturbed as he was. “Do you have any help in this house? Could they have come in? I thought I saw something just there earlier when I was thinking…” she pointed towards the spot she’d seen the movement, knowing now that it had been Kirjava’s tail swishing the air as she and Will began materializing.

Poor Lord Pyrrhos. His opportunity to map out her young body with his hands had terribly confused him; he looked from one end of the room to the next, his chin wobbling slightly as he did, confusion etched on every plane of his face. Lyra gasped softly and pressed her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, you don’t think they’ll run off and sell it, do you?” she breathed.

At that, Lord Pyrrhos jumped up, momentarily convinced that one of his help had crept in and stolen the book, even though they had presumably never stolen a belonging the entire time he’d known them. Lyra was getting a bit cocky; she lingered and helped Lord Pyrrhos ‘search’ the home for his help, and when he found them, she stayed to go through the arduous process of searching all their belongings and determining their innocence. Once she knew they wouldn’t be punished for something they hadn’t done, she set a hand against Lord Pyrrhos’s face.

“We’ll get it back, Lord Pyrrhos,” she told him fiercely. “And now that you know I can’t take it—for you can’t take what has already been taken—I’ll return to my own home to help begin the search. The book is very important to me, and through my travels I’ve met many people who are practiced in the art of finding what’s lost, and I’ll help you.”

But she’d miscalculated. She should have fled in the confusion. He shot a hand out and grasped at her wrist desperately.

“But, no! You’re to stay! I don’t care about that hideous book, you silly thing!” he cried, his voice choked with emotion.

 _Ah_. She hadn’t anticipated _that_. Bugger.

“Well _I do_ ,” she countered. She realized as his hand tightened that she was only going to get out of this as _Lyra;_ proper Lyra of St. Sophia’s college, the daughter of a lord, would never make it out of this situation. She dropped her act like she was setting something heavy down after a long, painful journey with it. “I only came here because I needed to look in that book and find my answer, and now that’s it gone, I en’t got any business here with you! And this en’t my home, and I _en’t_ a lady—or even _Belacqua_ —and I would sooner set myself on fire before I let myself get stuck here playing like I was _Lady Pyrrhos_ —” her voice turned jeering at that like children’s voices often do when they’re being particularly nasty— “and whatever my mission is it has nothing to do with you! And your dæmon is a nasty, pathetic little creature that torments my poor Pantalaimon so really you should have better control over her!”

He was shocked. It was probably from the novelty of the foul words falling from a mouth he had once viewed as civilized, and pretty, and soft. Lyra had received similar reactions from nearly every man who ever showed a shallow interest in her. They’d all been shocked to their cores to find who was really lurking inside her skin.

“Oh,” he finally said, very softly. “Well. That changes things, doesn’t it?”

And she supposed she wasn’t that surprised when the hand around her wrist tightened painfully. He swung her around and slammed her back against a wall so hard that the air whooshed from her lungs. She cried out, and at that sound, Pan turned feral. He tore into the weasel dæmon viciously, snarls echoing around the hall, clearly channeling some of his own hatred for the weasel in his attack, and the weasel hardly stood a chance. And Lord Pyrrhos, shocked by the pain of Pan’s attack on his dæmon, was relatively easy to subdue. Lyra kicked and scratched and spat and bit, putting up such a fuss that she was certain the servants could probably hear it from their quarters, until finally, Lord Pyrrhos—who’d been holding her against the wall— backed away from her.

She was out of breath, and her dress was ripped at the shoulder, and she could feel at least five bruises forming already, but Lord Pyrrhos looked at her for a moment like she was something to fear.

She was brimming with indignation as she spat right at his feet. Part of her wanted to threaten him—wanted to tell him that she’d have the witches or the king of the ice bears after him in a day’s time—but her shoulder was throbbing with pain where it’d been slammed against the wall and she just wanted to get out of there.

Pan agreed. At his prompting, she turned and fled through the first exit she found. She didn’t stop running til the heel of her shoe broke, and then she stopped to chuck her shoes into a nearby bin and kept on running. She slowed as soon as she hit Jordan property, confident that none of the servants or porters would lead a strange man to her lodging without her prior approval. Her room (tucked in one of the buildings inside the Yaxley Quadrangle) welcomed her with opened arms. She bolted her door behind her and leaned back against the closed door, gasping and panting, her face flushed from running and a bruise blooming over her left cheekbone. Her bare feet were covered in dirt and she’d managed to cut the ball of her left foot on something; the blood was pooling on the wood beneath her.

“Idiotic! The entire thing! Could’ve gotten horribly hurt! Idiotic!” Pan was only managing to get bits and pieces of his ranting out between deep gasps for air.

“Didn’t, though,” Lyra pointed out breathlessly. She slid down so that she was sitting on the floor and let her forehead rest against her drawn up knees. She stayed like that until she’d caught her breath. And then only one thing mattered.

“Will.”

Pan misunderstood. His eyes were still wild with panic. “He’d say the same thing! Idiotic!”

“Would not. He _helped_ us.” Lyra’s smile was gradual and sly. She was so pleased that she couldn’t keep from grinning. “He was _there,_ Pan. He looked wonderful. Didn’t you think so? And Kirjava—” Lyra remembered how it’d felt when the dæmon had brushed against her leg of her own accord. She grinned even wider. _That_ said more about where Will’s heart was at than anything else could have. “When do you think they’ll be back?”

“Soon, I hope,” he said, and Lyra heard twin excitement brimming in his voice, too. She knew he felt just as overjoyed at the thought of seeing them again as she did.

“Oh, I hope it’s tonight!” Lyra said. “I won’t sleep at all tonight! I won’t!”

Pan’s excitement was growing alongside Lyra’s. He bounced over to her. “We’ll stay up all night waiting!”

“And when they get here we’ll have food and chocolatl and coffee and tea and we can hug them and we can talk for ages!”

“Yes!!” agreed Pan. He darted around the room in a dizzying path, too excited to stay still. “I can’t wait to hear what they’ve been up to—”

“—how they’ve been—!”

“—what has happened in their world—!”

“—and to tell them everything that’s happened in ours!”

Lyra and Pantalaimon could hardly believe how incredibly _wonderful_ this day had turned out. The book was in the safest place in the world—Will’s hands—and he had found her. And soon, with the book’s help, she would find him. And this time, it’d be for good.

* * *

 

After his shift ended, he hurried home, where Kirjava was pacing the floor for him. She often went out exploring on her own when he was working (though sometimes she snuck into the hospital with Will and sat with him in his office), but she remained at his flat today to help watch over Will’s mum. She hadn’t been feeling well the night prior and Will hadn’t wanted her home alone while Mary was working, so he’d asked her to stay over at his flat so he could keep an eye on her. His mum was used to him playing the role of parent, even now that she was more or less better, and had agreed. It was for the best: Kirjava and Will were also reluctant to leave Lyra’s book unattended for very long, so this allowed Kirjava to keep an eye on it throughout the day as well.  

“How’s Mum?” Will asked Kirjava quietly as soon as he entered the flat. He draped his coat over the back of the first kitchen chair he saw and sank down into the one beside it long enough to toe his shoes off. His feet were aching.

Kirjava leapt up into his lap and rubbed her head underneath his chin, turning to curl up over his heart a moment afterwards. He needed it.

“She’ll be glad you’re home. She’s been fine today. She made dinner and cleaned the bathroom.”

Will grinned. He liked to hear that. That meant she’d been feeling unwell because she was genuinely ill, not because she was backsliding. He’d been worried last night.

He walked into the living room where his mum was. She was relaxed on the sofa watching some odd reality show on the television. He collapsed down beside her on the sofa and pulled her into a one-armed hug. She smiled up at him.

“William! How was your day?”

Will grimaced. “An amputation, three heart attacks, two births, and three casualties from a motorbike crash. So fairly typical.”

She let her head fall against his shoulder and patted his knee. “They were lucky that it was your shift.”

He felt calm and in his element as he sat there with his mum. Eventually, she rose to go check on the meal she was cooking, but Will remained in place. The day’s exhaustion was weighing on his bones, and he was content to let it win, content to—for once—let his mum be the mum. He could nap for a bit on the sofa. He didn’t have to work again until Wednesday, his mum was fine, he had seen Lyra again (touched Lyra again)…everything was wonderful.

But as he sat there, he could feel his consciousness stirring upwards in a way that was becoming intuitive and familiar. But he knew he needed to have that book in his hand, so that when he visited her again—and it was coming—he could give it to her. He looked out towards the kitchen and called for Kirjava. She strolled in and sat in front of him calmly, licking her paw like a real cat might do, and they only had to hold eye contact for a moment before she gave a soft, understanding _mew_ and bolted off. Seconds later, she returned dragging the bag the book was in. He had told his mother the night prior—while pouring over its contents—that it was his journal and very private besides. She would never have taken it or even looked too closely at it without his permission.

He pulled the bag up and set it beside him on the sofa, his hand closed tightly around the handle of it so that he could take it with him. But his anticipation had gotten his heart racing and had ruined his peaceful, calm state of mind. He was excitedly on edge, imagining what he and Lyra might say to each other if this could be a proper reunion this time. He felt frustrated with himself. He considered getting up and going into the kitchen to get a drink because alcohol had worked so well the last time, but his mum was here, and he had to be of stable mind for her.

Kirjava jumped up and lay on the back of the sofa just behind Will’s head. “Perhaps it’s like the knife,” he heard her breathe, hardly loud enough for him to make out. “Perhaps you can feel for her presence like you felt for those openings between the worlds.”

He felt frustrated because it wasn’t _him_ that had felt for those openings: he’d used the knife. But he longed to create some semblance of control over it all, so he let his eyes fall shut and tried it. He felt along the air around them first, because that was most familiar, and he caught his hand drifting up as if holding the knife. But he could find nothing, so he let his hand fall back down, and he changed tactics. Kirjava had said to feel for _her_ , not a window between their worlds. He tried forcefully for a few moments, but of course that wasn’t going to work. He assumed it was hopeless tonight because he was too exhausted to put in the extreme mental strain it would surely require. But it turned out to be the opposite. As he lay there drifting closer and closer to sleep, his memories and imagination melded effortlessly together, and his hand pushed into his pocket where he closed it around that handkerchief talisman, and he remembered with a rush of joy how soft her hand had felt as he’d touched it, how clever and heartbreaking she’d seemed forcing sobs into Lord Pyrrhos’s shoulder, how his own dæmon had brushed against her purposefully, sending a surge of something powerful and sweet right to Will’s core…and now he imagined (saw?) her slumped forward at a small table, every inch of the surface littered with books, paper, or used dishes, her hair draped wild over her shoulders and arms. She didn’t look too good: her upper arms were covered in bruises, her dress was filthy and torn, and the smell of fresh blood lingered in the air. Panic seized every one of Will’s facilities—and he nearly lost his focus. But then he saw Pan perched calmly in front of the kitchen window, looking perhaps a bit disheveled but fine despite, and the little pine marten had such an affectionate and longing expression on his face that Will could only hope he was thinking of them…

Kirjava leapt gracefully into the world first, as she had the last time. She wasted no time at all now and darted over to that window, jumping up onto the ledge in one quick movement. And before Will could even utter a greeting, the two dæmons were spinning and curling around each other, loud, overjoyed squeaks and exclamations falling fast from their lips. Will felt his eyes burn from the intensity of the shared emotion as Pan leapt onto Kirjava and nuzzled the back of her neck—and then Kirjava twisted them around so she could rub her face, purring, along Pan’s throat—and they were doing that strange, twisting dance again, turning each other over and over again, ‘til eventually they fell down onto the floor in a tangled jumble, the impact from the fall the last thing on their minds.

Will and Lyra felt it, though, and both inhaled sharply, Lyra still from her dreams (though now she was smiling). Will had to force himself to remain still and patient, and it was intensely painful to revel in Pan and Kirjava’s reunion without being fully present himself yet. But gradually, like the way snowflakes build up into drifts, he became aware of the cool air of Lyra’s home. He smelled burnt coffee and chocolate in the air. He could hear a slight hum coming from the lights and the far-off sound of what sounded like passing university students discussing philosophy.

Will took it very slowly.

He began with one tentative step forward. He watched his own feet as he stepped, forcing himself to remain acutely aware of all the sensations he was registering from this world (the chocolate coffee scent in the air, the sight of the sleeping woman at the table) in the hopes it’d ground him here. When he’d managed to take _two_ steps without feeling the threat of that awful backwards tugging, he let himself walk deliberately over to the window, where Kirjava and Pan were perhaps a bit _too_ cozy beneath the windowsill. Will could feel the joy they were feeling deep inside his own heart. He wanted nothing more than to run over to Lyra, to set his hands on her thin, bruised shoulders, to lean in and kiss her cheek…

He was still worried that he’d get yanked back to his own world, though, so he took a deep breath and took stock of his surroundings first. He had never been in Lyra’s world before. It was similar to his in an almost eerie way; things were the same, but different, in ways that almost slipped his focus unless he was looking very closely. It left him feeling a bit disoriented. He eyed the odd room; it appeared to be a sitting room of some sort, with an antique-looking hearth, a plush, golden sofa, a narrow wooden bookshelf that towered to the ceiling, and a glass case full of various knick-knacks. The small table that Lyra was at—laden with dishes—seemed like it would fit better in the kitchen of a busy London flat. In fact, as Will peeked down a small hall, he saw that there was no kitchen at all. There were only two doors leading off the hall: one to a bedroom and one to a bathroom.

“They have servants here for all that,” Kirjava reminded him suddenly. “Some food is brought to them and other times they go to the dining hall.” Her words were padded with purrs. Will remembered with a burst of affection how baffled Lyra had been the very first time they’d met to discover that everybody had to do their own cooking in his world. He remembered her indignation when he’d told her to wash the dishes. He grinned.

That grin soon faded. He turned with heart-clenching concern as he felt Lyra give a soft, sudden moan of pain. She had lowered her face to the tabletop in her sleep, inadvertently slamming her bruised cheekbone into the table, and it hurt enough to make her cry out in her dreams. Will forgot to ask himself if he was ready for it; he just set for her at once, his heart pounding hard in his chest.

“What happened?” he demanded. He pulled out the chair beside Lyra’s and sat down in it. He reached forward without thinking and set his hand on her delicate back, just between her shoulder blades and over her tangled, wild hair, his heart taking off at once at the feeling of her so solid and warm and alive beneath his hand. He could feel the soft, even motion of her breathing. He wanted to fold her into his embrace and kiss every bit of her, but he was afraid of two things. One: that he would overdo it and end up shoved back into his own body in his own world. Two: that she might not want him to.

So instead of giving into the desperate longing that was currently possessing him, he very gently brushed her hair back from her face and watched with equal amounts of excitement and nervousness as her eyelids fluttered. She woke softly. Not wanting to alarm her, Will pulled his hand back and scooted back some to give her plenty of space.

“Lyra,” he whispered. “Lyra, I—”

She had flung herself at him before he could even get his words out. Her thin, wiry body slammed hard into his, and if she noticed how banged up she was, she didn’t care at all. She fell out of her own chair and into his lap, her arms tight around his neck, her face pressed fiercely into his shoulder as she murmured: _Will, oh, Will, you’re really here, I knew you would be._ He held still for a few seconds, but when he realized he wasn’t spiraling back into his own flat, he lifted his arms up and crushed her to him in a tight embrace, and that only made her cling tighter, and in time they were gripping each other with so much abandon that a passerby might’ve mistaken it for violence.

She had begun to cry in soft, bittersweet gasps, and Will felt his own eyes tearing up alongside her. He loosened his arms a bit and leaned back from her—but only so he could lean in and press his face to hers. She met his kiss with blinding passion, her fingers raking at once through his thick, dark hair, and Will couldn’t get enough of her. He felt he could have kissed her every moment until he died and still it wouldn’t be enough. So he swept his hands up and down her back, gripping here and there for purchase every time she began to accidentally slide off his lap in her slick dress, and he kissed her a couple times, and then deeper, and then longer, and then his own heart cracked right open, spilling out all the love and desire he’d packed away and sealed when it hurt too much to see it, and once that was flowing free, he was helpless. He hardly remembered standing—he hardly remembered pulling her up—but suddenly they were gripping each other and stumbling down the hall, and Will could hear loud, fast heartbeats, but he wasn’t sure if they were his or hers or both, and he felt a sudden stab of panic—he needed to stop, to slow down, to take the time to appreciate this moment and _Lyra_ with every bit of his focus because he didn’t know how long he’d have with her, and what if he left now to never return without having examined her face or asking her how she was or what she’d been up to or—

He found himself pushed back on her bed, sprawled out on his back with the air knocked from him for a second or two. His shocked expression might’ve shown. Lyra fell down beside him and reached up to cradle his face in her hands. Her touch was impossibly precious and he leaned into it.

“Sorry,” she told him breathlessly. Her eyes were a bit wild as they studied Will’s, glowing soft blue in the lamplight. “I can’t even control myself at all, Will. It’s you and you’re really here and I don’t even know _how_ you’re here and there’s so much we need to talk about but all I can think about is…”

He had to lean in and kiss her again because he understood, and he felt the same way, and that kiss turned into another, and another, and another, and he was sliding his hand down the side of her body to her hip, and she was pressed so close to him that he could feel her heart fluttering fast like wings against his own, and every single touch from her and to her was its own miracle, born inside a moment he’d thought would never come, and he couldn’t get enough of her—he had never felt this way before—he had never felt such a craving for another person that he felt he might die or be split straight in half if he couldn’t have them—

But she was right. His momentary clarity entered the room, carried by a slight breeze as their dæmons pushed open the bedroom door. He had to grapple for every _ounce_ of his self-control, and once he’d located it, he pulled Lyra down to hold her against his chest, so that she might realize that he wanted to hold her and love her but that he didn’t want to risk getting carried away just yet. And going by the way she melted into his embrace, she understood.

He leaned down and he kissed her cheeks, her nose, her lips. He could feel affection leaking from every pore. He had never been like this with anybody but her, and he was surprised by how quickly it returned to him in her presence. He had felt this side of him had been lost forever, left with her. And maybe it had – maybe she had just returned it to him.

“I would keep going and never stop if I left myself,” he admitted to her, his cheek nuzzling at her tangled, dirty hair. How funny it was to him that he had found her this way again, matted and disheveled, despite all the years and changes they’d gone through. “But I’m afraid to leave here without getting the chance to talk to you, and I still don’t have much control over whatever _this_ is.” He gestured at his own presence. “I could fall back into my own world at any moment.”

“Yes,” she agreed softly, and when he looked down at her, her eyes were glittering from behind tears she was stubbornly holding back. “I wouldn’t ever get over that, I shouldn’t think. If you left and I never saw you again and I never even got to ask you how you were or what you’re doing or any of that.”

“Right,” he agreed, his voice equally hushed as if they were in some sort of sacred place. It certainly felt like it. He stroked her back, feeling the delicate line of her spine beneath the thin fabric of her dress. She had her hands fisted around the material of his shirt, and it was only then that he realized he was wearing exactly what he had been wearing in his world: his scrubs, which Lyra certainly must have found ridiculous, for Will doubted doctors in her world wore them. But Lyra made no comment and it was likely she’d not even noticed what he was wearing. He had only noticed her dress because the state of it was so alarming—ripped, dirty—and because the silkiness of it had made her hard to hold on his lap.

He wasn’t sure where to start. His mind was flipping through all the things he’d told her aloud in the Botanic Garden over all their years apart. What was most important? What news had kept him awake at night wanting to share it with her so desperately it made his entire chest ache?

“I missed you every day,” he heard himself say. He supposed that really was the most important thing.

“I missed you every moment,” she shot back fiercely. He had forgotten how it felt to be loved by her: radiant and empowering, yet it felt gentle and soft in ways he couldn’t explain, like he was the owner of some grand, precious treasure. “You really did? Every day?” she asked.

He hugged her closer in response. The soft curves of her body were different from when he’d last hugged her, but he supposed he probably felt different to her, too. For once, the thought of all the growing they’d done alone didn’t cripple him. It excited him. Change was sad when the person you loved changed in ways you’d never know, but it could be exciting when you’d get the chance to grow with them. And maybe that’s what they’d get: the chance to grow together. It was all he’d ever really wanted. There had been a small part of him that had worried that she wouldn’t feel the same for him if they ever met again, but he wondered now why he had ever worried about a thing like that. Lying there in her arms, it felt like he’d never left, like they’d stayed on that boat together in that narrow, sea-tossed bed forever. He remembered what he’d told her so many years ago now ( _I didn’t know I could ever love anything so much.)_ It was still true.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” she admitted, her voice trembling with excitement—or perhaps emotion. “There’s so much that’s happened, Will, and some of it I haven’t told anybody but Pan before because I only ever wanted to tell _you_ and now you’re here and all I want is to hear about you and what you’ve been doing and—and—” she broke off with a much-needed inhalation. She tugged gently at his scrub top. “You’re dressed quite funny, you know. Are you a brickburner or something?”

Will laughed aloud at that. He rolled her over without thinking about it and kissed her deeply, tasting her somewhat indignant response to his laughter.

“What?” she demanded.

“I just thought you might find it funny, what I’m wearing, though I didn’t know if you’d even notice with how quickly you threw yourself at me—”

“Oh, well, _you_ were quick to let me!” she reminded him.

He grinned wider. “Yes, well, I’d be mad to have stopped you.”

She nodded seriously in response.

“I’m not a brickburner, whatever that is. I’m a doctor.”

Lyra leaned back to look up at him, her face bright. “A _doctor_! A proper doctor? Who heals people and all that? A _doctor_?”

He was amused by her response. “Yeah. Went to school for ages and everything.”

She reached up and set her palm on his chest. His heart picked up pace in response. “But why have they got you in servant-looking clothing? Doctors wear smart white coats in my world.”

“They sometimes do in my world, too. Only right now people think they’re unsanitary, because of the long sleeves, and doctors wear these most places,” he explained.

Lyra slid her hand slowly down the front of his chest, though he didn’t feel like she was trying to instigate anything: she simply looked curious and thoughtful. He let her hands wander up and down, from his shoulders to his stomach and back up again, working to keep himself calm.

“Doctor Parry,” she said, and he felt the strangest shiver race down his spine at that. She nodded once, resolute. “Yes, that’s right. I never thought of it, but now I see that that’s all you could have been. You’ve been taking care of people from the start…your mum, your own self when you was—were, sorry, when you were only a boy—and then you took care of me and now…yes,” she nodded again, very pleased. Her approval made him warm to his bones. “I bet you’re the best doctor there is, Will. The very best.”

“It’s odd because I _am_ good at what I do, and it’s sort of because of the knife,” he admitted to her. He had never said those words to anybody before but Mary. “When I’m looking at people—their injuries or their scans or their bloodwork—my mind does what it always did with that knife. I can find answers like I’m finding those gaps between worlds. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.”

“I think you like it ‘cause you like taking care of people. And bossing them around.”

He leaned in and nudged his nose against hers in playful scolding. She responded by leaning in and kissing his lips once.

“You know I’m right,” she teased.

“Maybe you are,” he allowed.

“And your mum?” Lyra asked, suddenly a bit apprehensive. She studied his eyes carefully. “How is she?”

He smiled brightly. Lyra’s entire body relaxed against his with relief.

“Oh, wonderful!” she exclaimed, overcome with genuine joy on his behalf before he’d even said a word.

“Mary got her some good, proper help. She still has bad phases every now and then, and we have to adjust her medication when that happens, but she’s doing so well. She hardly needs me anymore. She lives with Mary right now because she wanted me to be on my own—she thought I needed to experience that—but I was too afraid to leave her all by herself. She and Mary are mostly just roommates, though. They’re great friends.”

“Mary,” Lyra said happily, fondly. “She’s doing well?”

“Yes. She can see her dæmon now, you know. Sometimes I can see him, too, if I’m looking in just the right way.”

He began the long process of pulling through the tangles in her hair. She craned her neck back slightly and allowed it, even seemed to enjoy it. He couldn't keep his hands off of her, but she was having a similar problem. He still couldn't believe that she was  _here_ , and touching her helped it feel more real. It was probably the same for her. 

“Before you tell me all about how you turned into proper Lady Silvertongue—”

She scowled viciously at him and interrupted him. “I am no such thing!”

“Aren’t you? I heard you talking to Pan when you were in _your_ Botanic Garden and you said _dissertation_. You’re educated and everything now.”

“I didn’t have much choice,” she grumbled. “I went off to live at St. Sophia’s as soon as I got back and they weren’t nearly as lenient as my Jordan Scholars were when I was little. They whipped me so hard the first time I skipped classes that it didn’t seem worth it to try again, and Dame Hannah wouldn’t work with me on the alethiometer unless I promised to work with her on my grammar and manners, though I’m _much_ more advanced than Dame Hannah now, probably the most advanced alethiometrist alive. But it’s awfully difficult, Will. I never could have imagined how difficult it’d be. It’s taken me over a decade for any of it to make any sort of sense, and even now I have to carry loads of notes and papers around with me to decode most answers…” she trailed off bitterly. She leaned back a bit more so that she could look him full in the face, her expression morphing into something deeply serious. “That’s why I needed that book, Will. It’s the only one that was ever made and it deals entirely with the combination of symbols. I don’t need any more books about the meanings of each symbol—I’ve got most of those meanings off by heart—but it’s the way the meanings shift up and down depending on the sequences that’s confusing me now. And I asked it a question…oh, I’m telling this all wrong, this isn’t where I should have started because this doesn’t make sense unless you know what I’ve been doing for the past few years, but I asked my alethiometer how I might travel between the worlds again, and it took me _years_ to decipher its answer, but it told me that one was left open, Will, one of the natural windows between our worlds, the sort that have been around forever and don’t leak Dust, and I don’t know yet whether it was an accident by the angels—since they said they would close _every single one—_ or maybe a rebellion by one, but there’s still one there, only I don’t know where in this entire world it’s at, and the answer it gives me when I ask is so complex that I can’t make sense of it.”

“A compass, a candle, a bull, a beehive, a globe, and an elephant,” Kirjava murmured. She leapt up lightly onto the bed and stepped carefully over Lyra. She came over to curl up behind Will’s back.

Lyra looked astounded. “Yes! But how did you…?”

“We saw it. We’ve been traveling here in our minds, but we haven’t really been able to make contact until recently,” Kirjava replied.

Lyra’s words came out in a rush. “It’s an incredibly complex answer that I can’t break, and there’s more, too, but I always lose my focus before I can see the last few symbols because it just keeps going on and on.”

Pan joined them. Will felt a strange longing in his heart as Pantalaimon moved to curl behind Lyra, though he didn’t know if it was from the loveliness of seeing the two together again or if he was wishing Pan would come close to him, too. He craved the soul-deep intimacy he had once felt, his hand in Pan’s fur, and he wondered if Lyra ever longed for it, too.

“We think we’ve figured out a way that’s possible to see you both again,” Pantalaimon said suddenly, and when Will glanced over Lyra’s bare, bruised shoulder, he saw Pan watching him with warm eyes. “It all started years ago, when we were fifteen, and there was this witch’s dæmon that tried to trick us into going to a trap where a witch was waiting to kill Lyra and me—”

“A witch? Like Serafina Pekkala?” Will asked sharply.

“No, from another clan, a bad clan,” Lyra explained.

“We realized it was a trick before we got hurt, but we met somebody that night, a man named Sebastian Makepeace. Everybody thought he was mad because he said he was an alchemist, only he wasn’t; he was just pretending to be so that nobody would guess what he was _really_ doing, and that was working with Dust. Lyra and I had an idea: what if we could find a way to keep Dust from escaping out of windows between the worlds? What if there was a way to block it from drifting out? Then it would stay where it belonged and the universe wouldn’t be at risk and we could see you and Kirjava again. It didn’t seem right to us, that we should all be confined to our own worlds forever and ever when there must be a way to make travel between them possible and safe. There’s so much our world could learn from yours, and yours from ours.”

Will listened with rapt attention. Lyra continued after Pan had stopped.

“So we started visiting Sebastian more and more, and we told him our true story, and he was amazed and he really wanted to help. The only problem was…he had no idea how to create something to block Dust from escaping, and neither did we. We weren’t even sure that there could be a humane way to create windows again, not without the knife, but we would never dare to even _try_ unless we knew we could keep Dust from escaping. So first we traveled to Texas to meet an experimental theologian who had escaped there to live underground, hiding from the Church in fear it’d regain power again one day, and he knew all about chemical substances that could block Dust, but it ended up hurting it, too, and that’s not what we wanted. He knew another experimental theologian who lived in Arabia who had been looking into something similar, only he was looking for ways to multiply Dust, having learnt what we already know about it and its goodness. He hadn’t figured it out, of course, but in the process of trying to duplicate it, he had stumbled upon ways that _hindered_ it. Pan and I went with Sebastian and his dæmon to the Levant and met with loads of secret societies of experimental theologians who were really interested in our goal and wanted to help us…I told them _all_ about you, Will, and you, Kirjava, and all the things we gave up…”

Will felt flushed with pleasure and embarrassment to imagine Lyra—sat in front of an entire rebellious group of physicists—talking all about _him_. He wondered what she’d said. He wondered what they’d thought. He wondered if they had any idea how much it had hurt to leave each other, or if they’d written it off because of Lyra and Will’s young age.

“They set to work at once to find a way to create safe openings between the worlds, but it wasn’t going well—it still isn’t. They’ve figured out how to create a sort of…curtain that can be placed at an opening to keep Dust from escaping out of it, but they haven’t been able to create another method to bridging the worlds that doesn’t involve mutilating somebody and taking their dæmon. Pan and I made them _swear_ they would never resort to that. We were beginning to give up hope when I was able to make sense of the alethiometer’s answer to my question about getting back to your world. When it told me that there was a natural opening left, that changed everything. I didn’t have to find a way to make a new opening; I just had to find the one that had been there for thousands and thousands of years. But the problem, as we’ve said, is that the answer I keep getting when I ask where the opening is is dreadfully complicated and I fear it’ll take me another decade to make sense of it.”

Deep sorrow rooted in Will’s heart. “A decade?” he asked, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

“Probably not that long now that I’ve got the book. But just in case…just in case I can’t _ever_ make sense of it…well, that’s why I’m still working with the experimental theologians. Because if they can find a way to create safe windows, it doesn’t matter whether or not I ever find the one the angels left. And working with these theologians is quite risky because I’m not strictly supposed to be associating with _anybody_ the Church would deem ‘heretical’. There were all sorts of rumors about me once Pan and I returned, but I had loads of people protecting me, and those members in the Church who knew of my prophesied identity knew better than to try and execute a little girl after losing so much of their power in society already. The Church is much less powerful than they used to be, though they have recently begun gaining more and more power, and I’m being watched all the time.”

It made Will terribly worried to think of Lyra in danger, especially when he was so far from her. That concern momentarily overrode his excitement over the news of what she’d been working towards.

“How do you know they’re watching you?” he asked.

“Farder Coram’s spies. Serafina Pekkala’s spies. The Master of Jordan’s spies. The Church has bigger problems right now—namely how to get enough power to once again work against Dust and control society—but they absolutely loathe me.”

“They don’t even know you,” protested Will defensively, the way lovers often do.

“Oh, they _should_ loathe me. They’re right to. Farder Coram says it’s because they fear me, and I believe him, too. ‘Cause—because all this time I’ve been studying, I’ve also been part of all sorts of secret meetings, and I’ve sort of become…” she trailed off, searching for the right word. “An expert, maybe? Everybody who has anything to do with Dust talks to me. And I started this board, right, and it’s like the opposite of the Gobblers, and we keep watch over all the Church’s secret dealings to make sure they aren’t trying to tear children apart in the name of destroying Dust, and we’ve stopped _three_ plots thus far and new ones are brewing every day.” She looked quite proud of herself. Will fell in love just a bit more. “The Church knows about the board, but we’ve framed it to the public as a child protection group, made in response to what the General Oblation Board had been doing, which the public was _horrified_ about once it came to life. They tried really hard to get it shut down right after we started it. They said all this horrible stuff about me…they pointed out that the General Oblation Board was started by my own mother, so how could the public know if I was trying to help or just trying to secretly pull the wool over their eyes to continue my late mother’s work? Luckily most everybody saw through that.”

Will couldn’t imagine anyone watching Lyra speak about something she was passionate about and walking away still disliking or distrusting her afterwards. She had certainly won them over.

He tried to wrap his head around her life. “So you…what? Study during the daytime and run secret groups in the dead of night?” He had to laugh.

“Mostly I study the alethiometer. That’s most important to me. But I got an MPhil in Economic History and I’m working towards teaching it at Jordan. I can’t earn a living from my alethiometer, and I enjoy my area, and my money is set to run out soon if I don't find a proper job, so it’s what made the most sense to me.”

The thought of Lyra as a spirited Humanities lecturer made Will smile, but it was the thought of her with her alethiometer in hand that felt _right_.

 “I think you’ll be great at that,” he said, feeling strangely soft. He didn’t know how much longer he’d have with her and wanted to make the best of it, so he pulled her back against him so he could feel her heart beating against his. “Has it been lonely for you? All the studying and the secrets? Though you have quite a few people you can talk to about the things we did, I guess.” He only had Mary.

She seemed to sense what question he’d restrained himself from asking. “There have been loads of long nights in libraries. I've had to craft a different version of myself that I can show other people more often than I’d like to admit. I haven’t been alone—there have been people around me, some that I love dearly—but I have been lonely.”

It was like she’d pulled the emotion from Will’s chest and put into words for him. _I haven’t been alone, but I have been lonely_. It was precisely what he’d felt.

She continued. “I get to see Iorek Byrinson as often as I please. He’s a _wonderful_ king, Will, and I’ve even got a little cottage to myself on Svalbard. The witches treat me like a sister—though I know I’m not really one—and Serafina checks in on me often. There have been friends, girls my age, girls I went to school with at St. Sophia’s, and they’ve taught me quite a lot and have provided comfort during times of hardship, but I don’t feel any of them truly know me. And…there have been boys.” He felt her face grow hot against his chest. He tried to ignore the heavy sensation of dread that dropped his stomach to his toes. “Mostly Gyptians—I never did get on well with aristocratic boys as they always go faint when they realize what I’m truly like.”

He took a moment to compose himself. “And did they treat you all right?” _Is there anybody now?_

“Oh, yes. And I loved some of them in some ways, I did. But I never loved any of them in every way. The ones I loved dearly, I didn’t feel…” she trailed off. Her face burned hotter. “And then the ones that I did feel _that way_ for, I didn’t feel more than friendly affection for, so it never really lasted. I tried to be good to them, like we promised each other. I always tried.”

Will’s guilt was overpowering. Lyra sensed it. “Will?”

“I tried to be good, too, but I don’t think I did a very good job,” he admitted. “I have a girlfriend, and right now, I don’t feel guilty that I’m here with you like this; I just feel guilty that I’ve let things with her go on as long as they did. I kept hoping that if I just settled down with someone—someone clever and kind—that the sort of love I wanted to feel would eventually grow over time, but it…well, now that I think about it, I think probably it never grew because she never really knew me. Even now, I don’t feel bad that I’m going to end things with her because she doesn’t really have anybody to lose. She never really knew me; I never let her.”

Perpetually alone. He’d been wrong before. In many ways, he had been alone _and_ lonely.

Lyra didn’t respond as quickly as he thought she might, but she didn’t pull away from him, so he tried not to worry. Finally, she said: “Will, you don’t have to end anything on account of me. It’s been…ages and I’d understand—” here her voice broke—“if you feel different than how you felt when we were twelve. I’m just so glad to see you again. I'm so glad you're _okay_. That was the hardest part...not knowing how you were or if you were even still alive.”

Even the thought made his heart fill with unbearable pain. He hated that she could think like that, that she could even consider for a moment that he didn’t still love her. He had told her before that he would always love her. He was a man of his word.

He was trying to figure out how to respond when he felt Kirjava make a slightly disgruntled noise. She leapt once over Will’s body, landing deftly on her paws on Lyra’s other side, and there she curled up with Pantalaimon, very purposefully situating herself so her back pressed right against Lyra’s. She settled down and stayed there, breathing in time with the girl and her dæmon, who were both breathing in time with Will. Will shivered in Lyra’s arms right as she shivered in his.

“Oh,” she said, her voice small and pleased.

Will let his hands drift slightly farther down her body. His heart pounded as they settled on her hips. “I tried to move on because I knew that’s what I ought to have done, but it never felt right. I never meant to be unfair to anyone. How could I have known that I’d see you again? I had all but given up on practicing _this_ sort of traveling, Lyra. It’s a miracle it all clicked when it did. And I don’t even know for sure why it did, or what this means, or how to control it. But I _feel_ real. I _feel_ like I’m here.”

She slid a hand up to cup his cheek. He was self-conscious of the fact that he hadn’t shaved in three days. “You feel real to me, too. How does it work?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wish I did. It always happens when I’m either very tired, drunk, or disoriented. I’ll find myself just sort of…imagining you and what you might be doing. But then it’s not imagining anymore: suddenly I’m seeing where you are. The first couple times, I couldn’t move at all, and I don’t think I brought my body with me. I was just sort of watching. Then I realized I could speak. Then I realized I could _move_. That was the tricky part. All I want when I see you is to run at you, but when I try, sometimes it yanks me back to my own world.”

“Is your body here _and_ in your own world right now?” she asked curiously. She brushed her thumb along his bottom lip. “If you raise your hand here, for example, will your hand raise in your world?”

“I have no idea,” he said. He thought about how he’d fallen to his knees in the Botanic Garden when it’d tried to take a step forward. “It’s possible. Or maybe I just appear to be asleep. Maybe what makes me fall back into my own world is that I’m trying to move _that_ body instead of _this_ body.”

“I wonder how you might learn to control it,” she mused.

“Practice,” he answered at once. He wanted to squirm with joy at the thought of that.

“I’m going to find you, Will,” she swore seriously. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at him, her light eyes hot with passionate determination, her thin lips set in a serious line. “I never stopped looking. I’m not giving up. I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to find a way to get back to you. And it’s _not_ selfish, Will, it’s not. Because somebody left that window open all this time and there must have been a reason…I’m sure there must be.”

“I wonder why they would leave one open when they said that they wouldn’t,” Will wondered. 

“Well,” Lyra began slowly. She stroked his back idly as she thought, and it felt so nice that Will caught his eyes drifting shut contentedly. “Xaphania’s reason for not leaving any natural openings between the worlds was that we’d spend our entire lives searching for it, so to keep us from looking, she told us that she closed them all. But she didn’t have to _really_ close them all. She only had to _tell us_ that, so we wouldn’t go wandering around stupidly for ages. Maybe she knew that I’d learn how to use my alethiometer again, and maybe she knew that when I did, it would tell me where it was, and that the time would be right for us to meet again. Maybe there’s something bigger that we’re meant to be doing now, something that we’re meant to be doing _together_ , something that we weren’t meant to know about until the time was right.”

The idea of that both thrilled and terrified Will.

“But she underestimated me, Will. Because even before I knew there was an opening left out there, I was going to find a way to make one myself so that I could get to you. Granted, I was going to do it safely—and I still might do if I can’t figure out how to find the opening left by the angels—but I was going to do it. I don’t think anything could keep me from you. Not for forever.”

“Nothing could keep me from you, either. And this…this isn’t _perfect_ , but…if you can’t figure out how to get to me, at least this is _something_.” He leaned in and pressed his cheek sweetly to hers. The warm flush of her soft skin against his was invigorating.

“Right now, this _feels_ perfect,” she admitted. She moved her hands to his biceps, then up to his shoulders, then down his chest again, then to his stomach. His heart was racing. “It feels real. Will, I've wanted so terribly to touch you again, and I'm so happy right now that I could cry.”

 _God,_ he wanted it to be real. He wanted to be there forever, to just leave his own body entirely, to stay here in this bed and in her arms. And right then he wanted to roll her over, to press her into the mattress, to feel her small, hot body pressed so hard against his that he could feel every shift she made, every breath, and he wanted to kiss her and love her so wholly that she was filled up with goodness and pleasure, so that maybe she’d know how wonderful she was to him. So that maybe they would be bound together in another way so that they’d be that much harder to tear apart.

It was a love so consuming that it left him aching and craving and yearning. She ached, craved, and yearned too: he could feel it in the way she kissed him then, deep and demanding, her warm hands tucking up underneath his scrub top so she could touch his skin. How often had he dreamed of her hands on his skin? How often had he dreamed of his on hers?

It was simple to forget everything else. There was no room for any thought or sensation beyond _Lyra_. _Oh, he loved her—oh, she was beautiful—oh, he had missed her_ : these were the thoughts that consumed his mind while her touch possessed his body. He had no regard for her injuries because he simply didn’t remember them. So it was a sobering shock when he heard her yelp softly in pain as he moved his lips down to her shoulder. It was like a splash of cold water to his face.

“What?” he said at once, his voice low and serious. He lifted his face and looked up at her expression. Her light eyebrows had been furrowed in a grimace, but after a moment, the look of pain eased.

“Nothing, it’s only a bruise, only it hurts more than I realized it did,” she said. She seemed slightly surprised herself. She reached up to pull him back to her, but he resisted her hands, his eyes on the dark purple-black of her shoulder. He hadn’t been kissing her _hard_ , but the bruise was so extensive that anything would have hurt it. It had darkened so much in just the time he’d been there with her.

“What happened?” he asked then, realizing he had never gotten an answer. “Your dress…your bruises…”

“I was attacked,” she said blithely.

Will thought something like that deserved a bit more detail. “By _whom_?”

Lyra pressed her face into the crook of Will’s neck. She kissed his skin so softly that it made pleasure shoot from the pit of his stomach to his toes. “Nobody important.”

“Why did he attack you? Is he still looking to hurt you?”

“I dunno,” she admitted. “But he can’t get to me here even if he is.”

Will could tell she was dancing around the issue. It worried him. “Was it that man? The one with the weasel dæmon who had the book?”

A pause, and then she nodded. Will’s stomach clenched nervously.

“He didn’t hurt you because I took the book, did he?” breathed Will, horrified by the idea that he might have caused her pain.

“No. He hurt me because I didn’t want him. But don’t you worry—I gave as good as I got. Pan and I can take care of ourselves.”

“He didn’t…” Will trailed off, but because awkwardness very rarely deterred him, he pressed forward. “He didn’t… _hurt_ you?”

The implications were obvious.

“No,” said Lyra, and here she sounded a bit smug. “Pan was terribly worried about that, but I know men. I know how they see me: little Lyra Silvertongue, once wild, presently elegant and educated, daughter of two very powerful people, small and vulnerable. And they like that, these types of men. Small and vulnerable. They are always very surprised to find out that I’m quite adept at protecting myself. They never expect it, and so it’s easier to catch them off guard.”

“Still,” Will persisted, bothered by this. “You’re really hurt. And it could have been worse.”

“My point _exactly_ ,” Pan agreed. He sounded pleased to hear Will take his side.

“I feel okay mostly. But I don’t think I’ll ever do it again,” Lyra said honestly. “I’m glad I have the book, and I would do it again because having that book is important, but it wasn’t fun. Sometimes lying is great fun. But this wasn’t.”

He turned his focus to her injured shoulder, drawing the remains of her dress sleeve down to get a better look at it, his eyes clinical. She ought to have iced it at once; the swelling was visibly noticeable. He flashed his eyes up from her shoulder to her cheekbone. He reached up and lightly touched the discoloration there, though that bruise was much less prominent.

“I always seem to find you like this,” he commented softly. He’d meant it teasingly, but there was nothing teasing in his tone.

“Wasn’t even you who did it to me this time,” she shot back, and she had meant it teasingly, but there was nothing teasing in her tone, either.

He remembered the very first time they’d met. Her body flying at his, her fists smacking every inch she could reach, her surprising strength. Unwashed, bruised, fierce. And today? Her body flying at his, her hands touching every inch she could see, surprisingly strong. Unwashed, bruised, fierce. Lyra.

A different mood settled over him. He ducked his face and kissed her cheekbone. His kisses were light and worshiping as he trailed them down her throat. She dragged her nails up and down the skin of his back lightly, and no one had ever done that to him before, and he realized quickly that he desperately liked it. But then again, he liked everything Lyra did.

Their dæmons were gone, off somewhere giving privacy (and seeking it in return). Will felt this moment with Lyra was inevitable, as if some great force not unlike gravity was drawing them into each other. They were possessed by a passion that was both sides of every coin all at once: gentle and demanding, slow and fast, shy and smug, serious and delighted. He didn’t know her body yet, but he didn’t feel nervous. He kissed her and he found himself slipping into that same state of mind the knife had required, sensing where to touch and when and how, never fretting that he might make a mistake in his ignorance of her, but being content to learn and discover (later, when recounting the exhilarating experience, he would remember the term _negative capability_ —the mindset both he and Lyra had practiced so often in their lives, her with the alethiometer, him with the knife and later his medical diagnoses—and he would marvel at all the little things that had come together to make them fit so perfectly in that destined moment on that destined day.)

He had never in his entire life felt so _alive_ in the present moment as he did right then. He had always lived half in the present and half in the future, fretting about any of his number of responsibilities, and he couldn’t remember a time he’d ever felt so grounded. But he was then, with Lyra against him, her skin so pleasantly warm and soft, her pulse fluttering in her veins, her thin fingers sliding over his body— _alive, alive, alive_. And nothing had ever felt so wonderful, not physically, not emotionally, not mentally. He had never felt so affected in so many ways and so well. He had never before felt so much _belonging,_ like he was hers and she was his, like everything in the universe had worked together to bring them here. Like he would never once be alone again.

Afterwards, he stroked her hair back from her damp face with a trembling hand and felt himself moved nearly to tears as he looked into her eyes. How was this possible, that he was here, that he had just experienced something he, by all rights, never should have gotten the chance to experience with her?

Again, he had to wonder if perhaps he was going mad after all. If he was, it wasn’t bad, he thought, and he would let it take him.

“I think I may be dreaming,” Lyra decided. She was draped over him, her head resting on his bare chest. She seemed to be listening to his heartbeat. Every few seconds, she’d begin lightly tapping the rhythm against his thigh.

“I was just thinking that I might be going mad,” Will agreed softly. Even now they were on the same page. He felt they would never fall out of sync again.

Lyra turned her face so it was hidden into his sternum. “Don’t wake me,” she begged.

“Don’t treat me,” he said back just as fervently.

“We’ll be unconscious and mad forever,” Lyra decided. “And we’ll stay like this and we’ll never leave and nobody and nothing will part us again.”

He believed it. God, in that moment, he believed it. With everything he had and everything he would ever have.

“It’s never been like this for me. Nothing like this. Not ever,” Lyra said, her voice full and shaking with emotion. She didn’t have to say anything more. Will knew precisely what she meant and he felt the same.

“Me neither,” Will murmured into her hair. He rested his cheek against the crown of her head. Her hair still had that faint honey-sweet smell. “I didn’t even know it _could_ be anything like this.”

“Me neither,” she echoed ardently.

He didn’t feel angry about all the years they’d missed out on together, all the years they could have been like _this_. Instead, he felt himself brimming with unbridled joy at the thought of all the years to come.

He held Lyra tightly in his arms and felt her drift off to sleep. He fought his own exhaustion because he didn’t know what would happen if he fell asleep here: would he wake up back in his own world? He didn’t want to risk it. He couldn’t risk it.

But she was warm, and the weight of her body over his was soothing and comforting, and the smell of her skin was distantly familiar like the smell of a childhood home, and his heart was full to bursting after years of dreadful emptiness. In short: he had never been more comfortable in his entire life. He pressed his face into her hair and whispered _I love you, I love you_ in case he didn’t wake up with her, and then he let sleep claim him.

* * *

 

He woke to Kirjava brushing his hair out of his face with her paw. He blinked his eyes open and stared into her deep, expressive eyes, her multicolored fur blocking out the lights above him, and panic seized his chest. He sat straight up, grief slamming hard into him, convinced that he was back in his own world and that he had left Lyra without so much as a goodbye. But as he peered wildly around himself, he relaxed. This was not his flat. This was not his bed. This bed was covered in a heavy down-filled blanket, the bedsheet was of thick, expensive cotton (probably handmade), and the room was world’s away from his own. Where he had minimalistic tidiness, with sleek surfaces with specific purposes, this room was full of _stuff_. Nice, expensive _stuff_ , granted, but stuff nonetheless. There was an elegant wardrobe bursting open with an eclectic variety of clothing (all old-timey to Will’s eyes), a matching set of plush, golden-embroidered armchairs, a bookshelf towering to the ceiling absolutely jammed with hundreds of books, a small table holding a full service tea set, _five_ different decorative carpets, a glass shelf of interesting baubles…

Lyra’s world. Lyra’s bedroom.

Will was overtaken at once by excitement, and he turned and looked beside him on the bed for her, but her side was empty.

“Bath,” Kirjava explained before Will even had to ask.

He relaxed. And then he smiled. He pictured her in an antique clawfoot tub, her pretty shoulders and neck visible above the porcelain edge, her hair piled high with bubbles. Realistically, though, he was sure the water was probably dark with dirt.

“We’re still here,” he said.

“Yes,” Kirjava agreed, and she seemed happy, but she also seemed bothered by something.

“What?”

She walked up and sat beside him. “ _Why_ are we still here?” she asked. “We shouldn’t be. I don’t understand. You two…?”

“Yes,” he shared, for her and Pan had been elsewhere, and even though they would probably sense what had happened between their humans, they hadn’t witnessed it.

“So why are we still here? That ought to have been enough to push you back to your own world. You could hardly touch her hand last time without us ending up back home. What if something is wrong?”

Will felt irritation bloom inside his chest. It put his stomach in knots. He didn’t understand why Kirjava would try to make him fret when he felt so wonderful. Hadn’t he spent enough time in his life fretting? Couldn't he just enjoy this? Couldn't he just lie here for a few moments feeling happy, and loved, and understood, and safe?

“I don’t know, and you know what? I don’t care. I don’t care, Kirjava. I deserve this. I deserve this.” He tilted his chin up defiantly, daring her to tell him different.

“I know you do. I do, too. But I’m worried, Will. What if we never wake up?”

 _Mum_. The thought was sobering. But he shook the worry off as soon as it’d manifested. “Then we’ll get back to our world Lyra’s way, once she sorts it all out.”

“But what if it’s not that simple,” Kirjava persisted. “Think about it. What happens if you don’t return to your real body? You can’t feed it or take care of it. If you died in your world, what do you think happens to this version of you?”

He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. What do you want me to do, Kirjava?”

“Try to see if you can get back. I’ll try, too.”

“Now?” he demanded, anguished. “Not now! Not yet, Kirjava.”

“Then when? You’ve probably been lying there comatose for ages in our world. What if they’ve taken you to hospital or something?”

He hadn’t considered that, either. “I don’t know.” He felt sick. “Can’t we have the morning? I promise I’ll…I’ll try to go back after lunch. A few more hours can’t make that much difference.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Even if time passed differently here than it did in his own world, a few more hours couldn’t hurt.

He found his trousers on the floor and pulled them on for modesty’s sake, and then he wandered out towards the sitting room area, hoping there’d be some food somewhere. To his surprise, there was food: it was in the arms of a servant. His eyes went wide at the sight of Will but he soon mastered that reaction. He smiled politely instead.

“Good morning, sir. I have breakfast right here, sir. I hope it's enough for two. Where shall I set it, sir?” the servant asked loudly. Will wondered if he was hard of hearing, and he had never been addressed with that many _sirs_ before.

He blinked. “Er, the table would be all right, thank you.” He didn’t know if he was supposed to pay him. He looked around the kitchen for some money. “How much do I owe you?”

The servant didn’t understand. “Beg pardon, sir?”

Will frowned. “Money. How much do I owe you?”

The servant blushed bright red as if Will had just severely humiliated him.

“Nothing, sir! Nothing!” he squeaked.

Will realized he’d broken some invisible social rule. “Right, of course. Thank you for the breakfast. That will be all.”

The servant hesitated. His voice rose a bit more so that he was nearly yelling. “Shall I tell Miss Lyra’s visitors to come back at a later time?”

Will peeked around the servant, but he didn’t see anybody in the doorway. “Visitors?”

The servant picked nervously at his nails. His dog dæmon whined lowly. “Yes sir. Miss Lyra has two people here. From the Church.”

Suddenly, the servant’s nervousness made more sense to Will. He looked at the servant, and the servant looked meaningfully back, and Will understood.

“Yes, they should come back at a later date. Lyra is otherwise occupied and it would be quite rude for them to interrupt, particularly after an unannounced arrival. Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not from…Oxford, but is it generally respectable for Churchmen to show up unannounced at a young woman’s door in the early hours?”

“No, sir, never, sir. That is why the Porter accompanied them.” The servant shot a quick look back at the door. Will guessed the men from the Church were close enough to be in earshot. He leaned closer to Will. “The Master will get rid of ‘em.”

 _Buy him time_ is what Will heard.

“What do they want with Lyra?” Will asked forcefully. He allowed his protective fury to possess him. He had once been told in his younger years that he was naturally intimidating; he would use that to his benefit now.

“I dunno, sir,” the servant said. “But they show up every few years to try and ask her questions, only usually they don’t make it past the front gates, but our new Porter…” the servant trailed off, clearly not wanting to get him in trouble.

“Well,” Will said, bristling with outrage, certain he would die before he let these men in here to threaten Lyra, “they will have to go.  _Now._ And they _will not_ come back unless they are explicitly invited.”

He’d raised his own voice so the Church people could hear it. The servant bowed low at that.

“Yes sir, I’ll pass that along,” he said.

Will slammed the door after the servant and bolted it. He was ready and willing to fight if anybody tried to enter the room, but nobody did, and when he peeked out the window five minutes later, there was nobody outside at all.

Pantalaimon was curled on the bed when Will reentered the bedroom. He had heard it all.

“They just want to ask questions. It’s annoying, but they can’t do much else,” Pan reassured him. He seemed to sense Will’s irritation. “It’s likely they’ve heard rumors about what we’ve been up to in the Levant. They don’t have the power to prosecute for heresy anymore, but they have groups of fanatic believers who can make public life miserable for those they deem ‘evil’.”

Will felt a bit better, but he still didn’t like it. In his experience, strangers asking questions almost always caused trouble.

Will sat up on the bed close to Pan and Kirjava to wait for Lyra to emerge. He felt Pan edge closer, so close he could feel the heat from his small, furry body, though he wasn’t touching him. “You’re going back soon, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

Agony tore at Will’s heart. He had to fight to remain brave and unaffected. “Yes. I think I have to. But I’m going to be back.” He sounded confident even if he didn’t feel it. What he really wanted was to cry because he was terrified. What if he _couldn’t_ come back? All he wanted was to spend every night with Lyra, to talk to her every morning, to kiss her every evening...what if he never could again?

Pan, sensing his quiet sadness, nudged Kirjava. And Kirjava leapt over and curled up in Will’s lap, purring and rubbing her face against his left hand. And Pan—kind, sweet Pan—turned around to settle right at Will’s side, brushing the length of his body against him as he did, making warmth flood Will’s chest and momentarily drown out his sorrowful worries.

“Thanks, Pan,” Will whispered.

Pan made a noise that almost sounded like a purr, though it must have been the pine marten equivalent.

“She’s so happy,” Pantalaimon said, his affectionate eyes on the door his human was behind. “She’s never been this happy. Not ever. I don’t want you to go. Either of you.”

Kirjava turned slightly and nuzzled her face against Pan’s. “We don’t want to go, either. But we don’t know enough about this yet. We have to make sure we are taking care of our true physical selves.”

“You must come back,” Pan said.

“As soon as I can,” Will promised at once, with Kirjava purring along in agreement. “We’ll come back every day if we can, until Lyra’s found that window, until we can truly be together.”

Pantalaimon seemed soothed by that promise. Moments later, the bathroom door opened, sending warm, humid air out into the small hall. Will could smell the scent of soap it carried in it all the way from the bed. It smelled of lavender and almond. He heard hesitant footsteps, and then Lyra stepped into the doorway, her wet hair cascading down her back and a towel wrapped tightly around her. She looked afraid until she spotted Will, and then she relaxed, her face glowing with a smile. She hurried over.

“You’re still here,” she said brightly. She sat down on the bed. “I was afraid you’d be gone.”

“Not yet, but I will be soon,” Will admitted. A tender mood had taken over him with no warning. He opened his arms, questioning, and she answered by immediately scooting up and crawling into them. Her bruise looked a bit better this morning, and her skin smelled wonderfully clean, and her body was still hot from the bath water. He held her and tried to notice and appreciate every single thing about her so he would have it later.

“Do you think you’ll be able to get back to me?”

“Yes,” he swore, promised, vowed. He kissed her wet hair. “Nothing will stop me.”

“Nor me,” she promised him, and he knew she was speaking of her mission of finding that window between their worlds.

He was beginning to feel that tension within his chest that he’d felt moments before he’d been yanked backwards to his own world all the other times. Trying to stay there as long as he could, he opted to lie beside her quietly, not moving much besides occasionally brushing his fingers through her fast-drying hair or touching her shoulder. She lay beside him, too, her alethiometer held above her face, her fingers twisting and turning the dials with something so close to expert precision that it filled Will’s heart up like a balloon.

She didn’t write anything down now; she just whispered it underneath her breath.

“Compass, candle, bull, beehive, globe, elephant, camel, anchor, angel, apple, baby, tree…” and again, and again, and again.

Pan, Kirjava, and Will all watched her with rapt attention, their eyes on her face, drinking in every word she uttered, equally desperate to help her understand. Kirjava left the room only to return moments later with the book Will had stolen for her. Pan and Kirjava carefully turned the pages with their paws and stuck their little noses down towards the pages. Will didn’t want to look away from Lyra, from her hair tucked behind her ears, from her deep expression.

“ _Ooh_ ,” Pan whispered suddenly, excitement woven through his tone. “Lyra! Lyra! Look at this, this says—”

But whatever it said was lost to Will, because at that moment, he felt the most horrible freezing sensation that made him gasp aloud. His cry of alarm tore Lyra from her trance at once; she sat up and looked down at him, horrified.

“Will? Are you all right?”

He was shivering and his teeth were chattering. His hands were so cold he could hardly bend his fingers. Kirjava had crawled underneath Pantalaimon in an attempt to warm up. Had they not been so shocked and so cold, they might have realized that the feeling was coming from their real bodies in their own world, but they were so miserable that no rational thought beyond getting warm again could reach their brains.

Lyra draped herself over Will as Pan was doing for Kirjava, and her skin was so deliciously hot that Will gripped her nearly to the point of pain, his body still trembling from the cold. She yanked the blankets up over them, too, baffled yet pushed into frenzied action by his discomfort.

“What’s happening?”

“I-I-I d-don’t k-k-know,” Will gasped, his teeth slamming together hard as he shivered. He buried his face into the crook of her neck. “I-I-I think...—”

“Will? Will? Can you hear me?”

Mary’s voice. And just like that, like a flip had been switched, Will was looking up at the ceiling to his own bedroom, his mum and Mary leaning over him worriedly.

He was breathing hard like he’d been running. He looked around himself, panicked and disoriented, and it was then that he realized he was lying in a puddle of what felt like ice water.

His mother sat on the edge of his bed and threw her arms around him at once, careless of the fact that he was soaked.

“Will, are you okay?” she cried. She sounded terribly confused. “We were about to call an ambulance! You fell asleep before dinner last night and you just kept sleeping on and on…I couldn’t wake you…I was so frightened…”

Will patted his mum’s back with a trembling hand. “I’m fine, Mum, I promise. I was just exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping like I should’ve been…I went nearly three days without any sleep at all…I suppose it just caught up with me…but I’m all right now, see, look? Perfectly fine.”

His mum buried her face in his shoulder and hugged him tightly. Over her shoulder, Will saw Mary giving him a probing look. She hadn’t believed his lie. _Later_ , he mouthed to her. She nodded once.

“Sorry about the water, Will,” said Mary apologetically. She picked up the bucket she must’ve carried it into his room with. “We didn’t know how else to wake you.”

“It’s fine,” he said. He understood why they’d done it and it was a good thing they had. The last thing he wanted was to be taken to a hospital. His colleagues might think he was going mad once all the scans revealed he was perfectly fine. “Though I do want to shower and get in dry clothes.”

His mum let go of him at once. “Of course. I’ll strip the bed and put a fan on it so it dries by tonight…hopefully not too much water got on the mattress…”

While Will’s mum tended to the bed, Will stumbled to the bathroom. He was surprised to find his legs quite weak as if he’d been off them for weeks rather than a day. Kirjava slipped into the bathroom after him right before he shut the door. She seemed equally weak.

“We’ll have to be more careful next time,” she said, voicing what Will had been thinking. She turned and sat looking at the door as Will stripped his clothes off. “We were gone too long.”

“I feel like I’ve been in bed for weeks,” Will admitted. He turned the shower on, and while he waited for the water to heat up, he turned and peered into the bathroom mirror. He studied his naked body. Part of him had hoped…but no, his body was exactly as he left it. There were no signs of the light marks Lyra had left on him anywhere. It was as if it’d never happened. Sadness crippled him for a moment.

“It isn’t this body that I take with me,” decided Will. He turned away from the mirror. “I don’t know how it works, but I think I really was here the entire time, in a deep sleep. It _felt_ like my body, though, when I was there in Lyra’s world…so maybe I’m able to…I don’t know, create a sort of replica with my mind. I wish I understood how this works.”

“I do, too,” Kirjava agreed.

Once Will was in the shower, she moved to sit outside the closed shower door, keeping sentry. They spoke over the sound of the water pounding the walls.

“Mary knows something.”

“I know.”

“What will we tell her?”

“The truth, I guess. We need someone to know. We need her to cover for us next time. Maybe we can learn to control it better and we can plan our trips…we could tell Mum we’ve got some sort of conference…and Mary can come here to wake us up if we don’t manage to do it in the time we decide. I don’t know how she’ll feel about Lyra trying to find another window.”

“I shouldn’t think she’d feel anything but joy. If we can do it without harming the universe, why wouldn’t we?”

She had a point. And Mary knew better than anyone how devastating the split from Lyra had been for him. She had _never_ belittled his feelings due to his age. She had seen the deep, unique love he and Lyra had shared and she had mourned with him. She deserved to know the truth now.

“We’ll tell her,” Will decided. “Tonight. We’ll tell her everything.” He finished rinsing the shampoo from his hair. “Before we were pulled back here, Pan saw something in that book. Did you see what it was?”

“No,” Kirjava said sadly. “I felt the water as soon as you did. It distracted me. But we did a good thing by grabbing that book. I think it will be very helpful for them.”

“I wonder what the alethiometer is trying to tell her. It’s such a long response.”

“Whatever it is, I think it’s terribly important,” admitted Kirjava. “Not only because it will help us find her again. I think it’s important for everyone and everything.”

Will remembered that pull he had felt towards Lyra, the pull that had really always been there but had only intensified with time. It felt as inevitable as gravity—maybe stronger. Was it Dust? Was it fate? He didn’t know. Maybe it was just love. He had never loved anybody the way he loved her, so he’d have nothing to compare it to.

He shut off the shower once he was clean, went into his room to dress for the day, and then joined Mary and his mum in the kitchen for a meal (breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Will was so disoriented that he had no idea what time of day it was until he checked a clock.)

“You’re feeling better?” his mum checked.

Will dunked a piece of bread into his soup. “Yes,” he said honestly. He was glad to find his chest filling with warmth and delight at the memory of the time he’d spent with Lyra. He’d worried that he’d find it painful during the separation. “Much.”

In the distance, Great Tom sounded dimly from Tom Tower, the familiar sound of the bells settling Will’s residual restlessness. He had to be content not to know everything right now. He would figure it out in due time. What mattered most was that he had seen her again—he _would_ see her again—and everything else he could deal with as it came.


	2. for reasons wretched and divine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will learns more about his newfound method of travel. Lyra discovers a new way to study her alethiometer. Both struggle under the weight of old secrets and new. Lyra isn't a great patient. Unbeknownst to them, the Church gets the upper hand.

Lyra woke to the distant sound of chimes.

She inhaled sharply, startled from her pleasant dreams, and pried her cheek from the pages of a book she’d accidentally been using as a pillow.

“Pan?” she slurred, confused. She sat up; aching pain throbbed down her spine as she did. She had been hunched over the table of the Jordan library for far too long. “Pantalaimon?”

She felt uneasy. She didn’t feel him on her anywhere—not around her neck or in her lap—and as she peered around the darkened, deserted library, he was nowhere to be seen. It was true that they could go far from each other, but they didn’t often do it (partially because it would terrify people in their world and partially because they had little desire to be apart) so she wasn’t sure what to make of his sudden disappearance. She ignored the pain in her back and scooted the chair back from the table laboriously. The sound it made against the wooden floors set her teeth on edge. She stood, and as she did, she gasped aloud, for sharp, bone-deep pain radiated up her left foot and into her leg.

“Bloody sodding fu— _ow_!” her swearing broke off with another cry of pain as she tried again, gingerly, to set weight on her foot. She was met with the same surge of intense pain. She heard an echo of Pan’s voice: _you ought to have your foot looked at and tended to_ , he’d told her, two days after she’d stepped on something and sliced it open while running barefoot across Oxford (two days after she’d been with Will). She had dismissed his worries, rubbed some frankincense oil into the wound, and reassured him that she’d get some bloodmoss sent to her if it didn’t improve. And granted, it hadn’t really improved much in the three weeks that had passed since then, and it had seemed to get slightly worse every single day, but she hadn’t realized it was getting _this_ bad.

She took a deep breath to steel herself against the pain, gritted her teeth, and then hobbled over towards the closest window, trying to keep as much weight off her left foot as possible. She squinted out into the darkness. She recognized the chiming noise now that she was free from her dreams: it was the servants’ call to rise. They would begin their daily duties far before the sun would appear. She realized she had been in the library for nearly fifteen hours now…maybe Pan had gotten bored and had chosen to go on a nighttime stroll.

Lyra limped back over to the table she’d been at and began gathering all her books. She shoved them down into her shoulder bag and patted at the inside pocket to make sure her alethiometer was where it should be (it was). Once she had all her belongings, she exited the Jordan library and stepped into the brisk, early morning air. She tried not to spend the entire walk back to her room looking nervously around herself for Pan, but she caught herself doing it quite often.

Pantalaimon wasn’t in their living quarters. Lyra resigned herself to patience after sitting beside the window waiting fruitlessly for fifteen minutes; he would come back. She couldn’t leave the room until he did, though, so she hoped it was sooner rather than later. She didn’t much fancy being a prisoner inside her own home.

She really wanted to get back to work, but she was exhausted and in pain, so she decided to lie on her bed instead. She left her lamps on and didn’t even change from her clothes as if she might have to get up in a second’s notice. It had been the hardest habit to break after the years she’d spent on the run.

She _did_ , however, toe her shoes off, and the pain she felt taking her boot off her left foot was significant. She tried to pretend it wasn’t throbbing with pain and shut her eyes. She would have to go see the college doctor as soon as Pan returned, though when that would be, she didn’t know. It felt uncomfortable drifting off to sleep without Pantalaimon curled up with her. She had slept without him, of course, after he’d gone off alone with Kirjava from the Land of the Dead. But she had had Will then. She hadn’t been _alone_.

Thinking of Will was a mistake. It had been three weeks since she’d last seen him. He had made a brief appearance the day after he’d disappeared from her bed shivering and shaking and told her that he was all right, but that it had taken a lot from him to visit, and he was working on coming back. He had disappeared before he even finished getting his words out, but she was comforted by his reassurance, so she’d spent the first week after that brimming with delight; she replayed their reunion constantly and found she couldn’t stop smiling as she did. But as the week rounded into two and then three with no visits from him again, the memories soured with worry and concern. Suppose he couldn’t do it anymore? Suppose something happened and he hurt himself in his own world? Suppose she never saw him again?

It was those worries that had her working harder than ever to decode her alethiometer’s answer. And that impatience was the reason she hadn’t gone to have her foot seen to. She hadn’t wanted to give up any of her study time to wait for the Jordan doctor when she’d thought it was just a simple cut. She hadn’t wanted to do _anything_ but pour herself into her research. The Master of Jordan had scolded her for it three days prior—pointing out that she’d never make her dream of being the first female Jordan Scholar if she didn’t focus on her continuing post-graduate studies—but Lyra was finding it harder and harder to play the games of her world. It just didn’t seem as important now that she knew other worlds would soon be open to her, other worlds where all the hoops she had to jump through just for a shot at being respected and employed at a _male_ college would be seen as absurd.

She slept fitfully, roused alternatively by her throbbing foot and Pan’s absence. She was hovering between dreams and consciousness when she felt Pan return. Her heart stirred. A moment later, she heard the blankets rustle as he jumped into the bed. His fur was warm as he draped himself over her throat. She reached up with her eyes still shut and set a hand on his long body.

“Where’d you go?” she whispered.

He nuzzled just below her ear, his fur pleasantly warm. “I gave a copy of the notes we’ve decoded so far to Kaisa. She visited late last night while you were sleeping.”

Lyra sat up slightly, causing Pan to slip from her neck. He curled up in her lap instead and looked up at her calmly.

“You didn’t ask me.”

“No,” he agreed, no apology in his tone, his furry chin jutted up stubbornly. “I didn’t. Serafina can help us. The witches know of all sorts of things…maybe they know about this open door.”

Lyra felt frustrated and a bit betrayed. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. Maybe it was just the pain of her foot and her exhaustion making her irritable. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t used to him running off without her and it had worried her terribly. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be recruiting help from others, Pan. The alethiometer might not—”

“ _Might_ is the keyword. We really don’t know what it wants, not like we used to.”

Wounded and defensive, she blurted: “I understand it loads better than anybody else alive does!”

“Yes, but that’s still not enough. We need help or else we’ll still be looking for him when we’re fifty!”

Lyra fumed silently. She didn’t feel well and she didn’t like him running off without her. Finally, after struggling to contain her emotions, it burst free. “I was worried.”

This surprised him a bit. “Why? About me?”

“About you not coming back.” She turned her head to the side and looked down at the mattress, avoiding his eyes. She stared at the spot she had last seen Will and tried to control the whirlwind of emotion she was feeling. It seemed to be coming from so many different sources and angles.

“Of course I came back. I would _never_ not come back…” he flowed up and curled himself around her neck again. She turned her face and pressed it into his fur. She sniffed. She felt very young right then.

“I’m frightened, Pan,” she admitted, and he knew she meant about more than just him running off.

“Me too,” he agreed quietly. “That’s why I was trying to help.”

She relaxed back against the pillows. She turned her face and pressed into the pillow Will’s head had once rested on. “I think it hurts more now. What if they never come back?”

She had no idea what Kirjava and Pantalaimon had been off doing that night, but whatever it was, it must’ve been just as soul-binding as her and Will’s lovemaking had been. He had seemed just as injured by their long absence as Lyra felt.

“They will. They promised. He’s Will. He keeps his promises.”

She had been telling herself something similar over and over again the past week or so. She had been replaying the way his body had felt against hers—hot, heavy, perfect—and the way it had all felt so _right_. There hadn’t been a question in her mind at the time whether or not she was doing the right thing. There had been no doubts, no worries, no moral conundrums. He was Will, and she was Lyra, and loving him physically like that had felt as natural as breathing—though certainly more enjoyable. So she didn’t regret it…but part of her worried what it would do to her if he never came back after that. How could she possibly move on when she knew that it could be like _that_? She wanted to touch him and be close to him every day for the rest of her life, and she felt like she was _meant to_.

“We’ll just have to work harder,” she decided after a few moments of silence. “Because we made a promise, too. We promised that we would find them no matter what. So we must. Did Kaisa have anything new to share?”

“He knew nothing of a doorway left open, though he said they knew of a witch who might. He said he would return as soon as he knew anything.”

Lyra nodded. She yawned deeply. “And in the meantime, we’ve got to do whatever we have to to figure this out.”

But right then, she had to sleep. It wasn’t a choice; her body was automatically drifting towards it despite every effort on her part. Her sleep deprivation was catching up with her, and now that Pan was back, she felt like she could finally relax. He curled up at her throat as he always did and she pulled the covers over herself. She was ready to slip into dreams that would, in all likelihood, star the one she missed most when she heard a loud _crash!_ echo from the sitting room. She jumped up.

“What was that?” Pan hissed.

Lyra didn’t respond. She thought about her alethiometer. It was tucked inside her shoulder bag—her shoulder bag that was resting on the sitting room floor. She’d been so exhausted and concerned when she arrived home that she’d just let it fall there…she usually _never_ slept without it close by…what if somebody was here to take it?

“What if it’s Pyrrhos?” Pan breathed.

Lyra wasn’t worried about that. She was worried about her alethiometer. She grabbed the first heavy thing she saw—her bedside lamp—and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her left foot seared with severe pain as soon as she set it down on the carpet, but she managed to keep from crying out.

Brandishing the lamp, Lyra made for the bedroom door, her heart racing in her chest and her gait noticeably limping. Pan darted ahead of her for a few steps, then darted back to walk behind her legs, then darted forward again, then darted back. He was more frightened than she was. She just wanted her alethiometer. She pressed her back against the corridor wall and took a deep breath, her hearing doubly sensitive as she tried to figure out where the intruder was. She could hear both the silence and every tiny noise echoing in her ears. A shuffle across the carpet…the slight wheeze of somebody sitting on the sofa…a whisper…

Lyra leaned forward and peeked out into the sitting room. Her eyes sought her shoulder bag first. It looked undisturbed; it was still lying where she’d dropped it. She relaxed somewhat and loosened her painful grip on the lamp.

“Pan, go get the alethiometer,” she breathed. She peeked over towards the couch. From her angle, she could only see a quick flash of what looked like broad shoulders and dark hair. A masculine form. “I’ll deal with them.”

Pan crept slowly towards the shoulder bag, his body low to the ground, and he almost made it. But after shooting a look over his shoulder towards the intruder, his posture changed. He straightened up. He spun around. And before Lyra could say a thing, he’d pounced over towards the couch, landing right on the intruder’s lap. Lyra knew from the second he did this who it was, and as she limped out into the sitting room and looking fully at him, she realized it was obvious. It was _Will’s_ dark hair, _Will’s_ shoulders, _Will’s_ posture. Why was he waiting out here?

She shivered pleasantly as she felt Will stroke Pan’s fur in greeting. As she drew closer, she saw both Kirjava and Pantalaimon curled up in his lap. She walked around to face the couch. She watched as his handsome face glowed with a smile at the sight of her. It made her heart jump with fondness. She fell down beside him—jostling the four of them a bit—and curled up tight to his side at once, pressing the front of her body to the side of his, desperate to feel his solidness and know he was there. He wrapped his arm around her tightly and angled her chin up with a gentle nudge from his other hand. She felt she could have melted as he leaned in to kiss her softly.

“Why are you in here?” she asked quietly. The mood seemed right for hushed voices. With tenderness leaking from her heart, she reached over into his lap and set her hand on Kirjava’s head. The cat arched into her touch and nudged Lyra’s hand, prompting her to pet her. Lyra obliged joyfully.

He misunderstood. “I wanted to see you.”

“No, why didn’t you come back to my room?” she clarified. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and breathed in the smell of him. Her eyes fell shut contently. She reached up and set her palm against the side of his neck, her fingers stretching around to touch the nape of his neck. She had learned he quite liked her hands in his hair. “I thought you might be an intruder.”

He turned his face and pressed it against the crown of her head. His words were warm bursts of air against her scalp. “That’s exactly why I didn’t. I thought you might not appreciate me bursting into your bedroom unannounced in the middle of the night. I should’ve known you’d be awake.”

“It wouldn’t frighten me. And should you ever travel here in the middle of the night again, you should always come to my room.”

“Oh, certainly, Miss Lyra,” he told her, his voice full of affectionate mocking. Lyra laughed softly into his jumper.

“Why are you awake so late?” wondered Lyra. It was all so wonderful and she was so exhausted that she couldn’t help but fear that she was sleeping.

“Why are _you_ awake so late?” he shot back.

“I fell asleep in the library and then the bells woke me so I just came home. Then I was waiting for Pantalaimon to return because he ran off to meet with Serafina’s dæmon and I don’t sleep well without him—plus my foot is hurting terribly,” she explained.

She’d expected him to tell her why _he_ was awake now that she’d adequately answered him, but instead, he moved her back gently so he could peer down at her face. “Your foot is hurting? What did you do to it?”

 _Ah!_ She remembered with a surge of pleasure and relief that he was _Doctor Parry_. She could ask him! She needn’t go all the way to the Jordan doctor!

“ _You’re_ a doctor!” she remembered happily.

“What’d you do?” he pressed, turning to look down at her socked feet. His dark eyes widened slightly. “Lyra—your left foot is really swollen.”

She hadn’t expected the seriousness in his tone. She furrowed her brow. “Yeah?” She looked down at her feet. She supposed her left _was_ noticeably larger than her right. She tried to move her toes experimentally, but the pain it sent shooting up her leg wasn’t worth it, so she stopped with a grimace. “I stepped on something when I was running away from Pyrrhos’s home. My shoes broke, so I chucked them in a bin, and I didn’t even notice it’d cut my foot ‘til I was home and I got blood on the carpet.”

Pantalaimon and Kirjava jumped from Will’s lap as he moved to stand. Lyra watched as he kneeled in front of her, his hands very gently holding her left ankle in place. She watched in fascination as he sank into that familiar, trace-like look. He peeled her sock off and looked carefully at the wound on the bottom of her foot. She gasped aloud in pain as he prodded lightly at the skin surrounding it. His lips were set in a firm line.

“Do you have any idea what you stepped on?”

“No.”

“Do you have tetanus jabs in your world? Have you gotten one recently?”

“Do we have _what_?” Lyra said, alarmed. “Whatever that is, it doesn’t sound nice, and I wouldn’t have it done to me.”

“Guessing not.” He looked worried. Lyra watched him prod and examine her wound for a few more moments, his heavy brows set low in a look of intense concentration and concern. “Did you put anything on this after it happened?”

“Yeah. Frankincense oil,” she nodded.

He looked up at her. His lips parted in surprise. “That’s it? You get a puncture wound running barefoot across Oxford and all you do is put some frankincense oil on it?”

“Frankincense oil is very potent! It’s expensive— _and_ rare!” she defended.

His severe expression didn’t ease at all. “You didn’t take any antibiotics?”

“Any what?”

He dropped his hands from her foot. He stood and moved back to sit beside her on the sofa.

“Say _ahh_ ,” he prompted.

She arched an eyebrow.

“Just do it,” he told her. Sensing he thought this was very important, she obliged half-heartedly.

“ _Ahh_?”

She had no idea what he was checking for, but she’d passed that test. He set his palm against her forehead, then he felt just under her jaw on both sides, and then he pressed his fingers to the inside of her wrist and looked up at the ceiling. She looked up, too.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh. I’m counting.”

She waited impatiently as he counted her heartbeats. This wasn’t exactly the way she’d expected she’d be touched by him once they reunited again.

He dropped her wrist. Her hand fell down into her lap.

“Your foot is definitely infected, though I don’t think it’s life-threatening yet.”

“Oh,” she said, mildly shocked. _Life-threatening_ hadn’t even been on the table before that moment. “That’s good.”

He frowned. “No, it’s not. You’re still infected. You need antibiotics. Surely your world has them, I’m sure they’re just called something different. They’re tablets you can take to fight infection.”

Lyra nodded. “Oh, yes, we have infection tablets.”

He relaxed. “Good. Who is your doctor?”

“Jordan has a doctor but I haven’t seen him in…” Lyra trailed off and thought. “Well, not since I was fourteen.”

For a second, he looked like she’d punched him right in the jaw. He recovered after a deep breath.

“Okay, well, you need to go. Now.”

She balked at that. “ _Now_?” she said, outraged. “No! I’d have to have him make a house call this early and I’m not even injured enough for all that.”

“But you _are_ injured enough ‘for all that’. If the infection were to spread to your blood, you could die. And you could _definitely_ lose your foot.”

“Okay, look, I know you’re a doctor, but I know my own body, and I feel _fine_.” She crossed her arms stubbornly.

He took another deep breath. “Fine,” he decided. “I’ll just go back to my world and bring you back some medicine, then.”

Panic seized her. Her chest tightened with it. She reached out and grabbed his hands. “No! Don’t go, Will, you’ve only just arrived and I waited _ages_ to see you again.”

“And it won’t do us any good in the long run if you die from sepsis,” he pointed out. He stroked his thumbs against the backs of her hands, though. “I’ll be back. I’ve been working on my control over it the entire time we’ve been apart. Mary helped me.”

“But there’s no telling _when_ you’ll be back,” she argued. “I might even die before you come back with the medicine, so stay— _stay_. I’ll go see a doctor in a couple hours.” She leaned in and pressed her face against his neck. She wrapped her arms around him. “ _Stay_ ,” she repeated. She kissed the warm skin of his neck once, twice, three times. He dragged her closer into his embrace so that she was nearly in his lap.

“What if I promised I’d be back within the hour?” he asked.

“ _Can_ you promise that?”

“Yes. I can.”

And because he was Will, and therefore the person she trusted above all others, forever and for as long as she lived, she believed him. This changed things. An hour she could do. She couldn’t handle another three weeks, though.

“Within the hour,” she repeated carefully.

“Yes. I promise.”

She reluctantly loosened her hold on him. “I’ll be very cross if you’re late.”

“Duly noted.”

She watched in fascination as he set about “going back”. At first, it just looked as if he were thinking hard about something. A second later, he was utterly gone, as if he’d never been there at all. She hadn’t expected the surge of emptiness she felt at the sight.

“An hour,” Pantalaimon repeated, reassuring them both.

“We can nap for an hour,” Lyra decided. She needed the sleep, and anyway, her foot really _was_ hurting. She warmed a cloth with hot water and then returned to her bedroom. She drifted off to sleep quickly enough, comforted by the moist heat laid across her infected wound, wondering what her day would be like once Will returned.

* * *

 

She woke to pain. She moaned into her pillow and instinctively kicked out, for she felt something pressing hard against her wound, and it hurt so terribly that she felt a wave of nausea. Her injured foot made contact with something firm. This time, she yelped.

“Fuck!” she swore, trembling in pain, recoiling from whatever was hurting her. She pulled her left leg up to her chest and hugged it to her.

“Sorry,” whispered Will. The sound of his voice was like a salve. Her arms relaxed and let go of her leg. She turned over and carefully sat up in bed, making sure not to press her wound against the sheets. She stared down at Will—seated in a chair at the end of the bed, an array of what looked like medical supplies around him, a large syringe with a long plastic point in hand and a somewhat surprised expression on his face, his cheek red—and realized she’d kicked him in the face.

“What are you doing?” Lyra asked, torn between curiosity and irritation. Her foot was still throbbing. “Was that a jab? A tednus jab?”

“No,” he said, his lips quirking up in amusement for a brief moment. “I was trying to clean your wound.” He held up the syringe. “This flushes it with a saline solution to try and remove debris. There’s a lot in it. It’s deep and it probably needed stitches, but it’s too late now.”

“It hurt,” she said, still a bit surprised.

“I’m sorry. I hoped it wouldn’t. It’s really bad though, Lyra, and _somebody_ needs to see to it—even if it’s your Jordan doctor.”

She trusted him. “I’d rather you than him.” She stuck her leg back out bravely and shut her eyes. The pain began almost at once, burning and stinging, but she breathed through it. And after a few moments, her curiosity beat out her discomfort, and she opened her eyes again to watch Will at work. His large hands seemed oddly graceful as he tended to her wound; Lyra never got the impression that his missing fingers hindered him in any way. His hands were steady and his brow remained pursed in a look of intense concentration. She watched with interest as he finished flushing the wound and began dousing it with a strange, runny, brownish red liquid. She had never seen that in her world. After that, he applied a thin layer of what looked like some sort of liniment to the wound and wrapped nearly her entire foot with gauze. She was quite taken with his small, concentrated scowl and could have looked at it all day long. She wondered how many of his patients had fallen in love with him watching that expression and those hands at work. Probably too many to count.

“You must get many invitations to balls,” Lyra commented.

Will had been placing his medical supplies back into a black case, but he looked up at her at that, bemused. “We don’t really have balls in my world. Not like you do here.”

Lyra considered that. “Well, how do you court people you fancy then?”

“Oh, usually by asking them out to dinner or texting them.”

Lyra arched an eyebrow. “Doing _what_ to them?”

Will laughed. Lyra smiled at the sound of it. “Sort of like sending electronic letters. Just talking, really.”

“You must get texted a lot, then,” she amended. She watched him close the bag and place it to the side. “My doctors are nothing like you.”

“You haven’t been to the doctor in a decade; of course they’re nothing like me. You really ought to fix that. The doctor thing, I mean,” he said. He stood up and moved to sit on the bed. Lyra tried to hide her impatience as he scooted up towards her, but she’d always been bad at hiding her emotions. She felt he could tell how much she was dying for his closeness. And as soon as he was beside her, she happily snuggled up to his side. She pressed her face into his shirt and smiled. His arms felt warm and heavy as they wrapped around her frame.

“I’ve got a doctor now,” she reminded him, unconcerned. “Thank you for fixing my foot.”

“It’s not fixed yet. You need to take antibiotics for a few weeks. I left them on your table in your sitting room.”

Lyra nodded seriously, though she still wasn’t that concerned. She felt very safe and well-cared for in Will’s arms. Her foot had even stopped throbbing; whatever he’d applied to it had a cooling effect that was quite soothing.

“You made it back,” she said happily.

“Forty-seven minutes.”

“It must be getting easier to control, then.” Her heart swelled with joy at the thought. “Mary was able to help?”

“Yeah. Turns out she experienced something similar before when she was living with the mulefa,” he shared. He leaned down to kiss where her neck met her shoulder, but Lyra got the feeling he was holding himself back a bit. She didn’t question it. Will always had reasons and he always shared them with her. “I’ve figured some things out, but not everything. I’m just as confused about some stuff. Like _this_ ,” he dragged her body flush against his and brought his lips to hers. She dissolved into their kiss. He pressed his forehead against hers afterwards, and she would’ve liked for the kiss to have gone on longer, but she was content to push her hands up the back of his shirt and slide her palms over the smooth skin of his back. “This shouldn’t work. I shouldn’t be able to… _be here_ like this. Mary and I thought that maybe the entire thing is just a play on our imagination…we see what we expect to see but we’re not really _there_ …but….”

He trailed off. Lyra understood. She couldn’t imagine how they could’ve experienced what they had the last time they were together if he wasn’t _real_.

“It’s not just in your imagination. Or mine. Because you’re really here, Will. I feel you. I felt you. You were here, and you know how I know for sure? Because you left a mark on my shoulder and one of my friends saw it the day after and asked me where it came from. How could I have a mark if you are just in my imagination? And, okay, maybe I could imagine that I had it, but how could somebody else see it?”

He lifted his hands up. “We drew two red lines on my hands with marker in my own world before I came here, to see if I’d have them here, but I don’t. And if I was imagining myself here, surely I would imagine myself in the same state that I left in?”

It sounded like a question. Lyra was eager to agree; she didn’t like the suggestion that all of this was, essentially, just a hallucination. She sat up excitedly and pulled him with her. She nodded. “Yeah, ‘cause you’d just pick up the mental image of the last time you saw yourself and you’d take that with you, only you don’t see those red lines, which means this body is something different. It’s not your body at home, but it’s not fake, either. It’s _not_.” She set her palms flat against his chest as if to prove its solidity.

He reached up and took her hands in his. Lyra squirmed happily as he brought them to his lips and kissed each palm, his eyes burning into hers with an intensity she had never really gotten a chance to know before they were separated. How lucky she was to get the chance now!

“Then this raises new questions, questions I didn’t think to consider before,” he said. _Practical Will, always thinking,_ Lyra thought fondly. She had missed that about him. “If I’m somehow bringing a copy of my body here, and my body is actually functioning like my body and not like some phantom projection of one—”

“It _is_ ,” insisted Lyra. She would know. She had slept with people before him, and her experience with Will had been _more_ intense and real than any of those had felt, not _less_. There was no way it was a figment of their imaginations.

“If it _is_ , there are things we didn’t think about the first time.”

“I wasn’t thinking about much but you,” Lyra admitted truthfully.

“I wasn’t, either,” he agreed. “But if this is real, we have to think about things you think about when it’s real. Like birth control, things like that.”

Lyra furrowed her brow. “ _Birth_ control?” In her affront and confusion, she slipped back into her old dialect. “I en’t pregnant so there’s no birthing happening, much less controlling any sort of birthing!”

He backtracked. “No, that’s what we call it in my world, but it’s not about controlling a birth, it’s about there not being any births in the first place. I don’t know what you call it here. Preventing pregnancy is what I’m talking about. Keeping people from getting pregnant. You said you hadn’t been to the doctor in a while, and we didn’t use anything the last time, and if it’s my body and it’s your body, then…well, we need to be more careful next time, is all.”

Lyra understood, but she was still a bit confused. “What does me going to the doctor have to do with that?”

His head cocked slightly to the right. He studied her expression. “Because…don’t your doctors here give women medicine to keep them from getting pregnant? When they ask for it, I mean?”

The idea was shocking to Lyra. “What?! The Church would probably have a strop! They’d never allow that. They tell us it’s our job to have babies—that or being a nun—and that’s part of the reason they hate us female Scholars so much.”

Will looked more shocked than when she’d kicked him in his face. He looked down at her, his expression prying and grave. “So what _do_ women do to keep from getting pregnant?”

Lyra shrugged. “The Gyptians have a special drink. The witches have herbs and potions. Sometimes midwives will get involved if you have quite a lot of money, but I don’t think they can do much, or else I wouldn’t exist, would I? I don’t imagine my mother meant to get pregnant, and she was clever and powerful, so I don’t think our midwives or doctors help much.”

He shook his head. “Sometimes your world seems a lot like mine, and then other times it seems like…an ancient version of it. Lyra, what do _you_ do? You said there had been men.”

Had anybody but Will asked her that, she might have smacked them. It was not a question one asked a lady. But he wasn’t expected to follow the social rules of her world, and he was Will, and so she answered him. “There were, but I’ve only ever been with one like _that_. He was a Gyptian, and I was staying with him for a time, so I had access to the drink the Gyptian women use. Women from my class usually just hope they don’t get pregnant or they wait ‘til they’re married to be with men like that.” The more Lyra thought about what Will was saying about his world, the more intrigued she became. “So what do ladies in your world do?”

“Loads of things. We have loads of ways to prevent pregnancy. Contraceptives—that’s what we call them. And it’s not really popular anymore to wait ‘til marriage which is why we’ve got so many options.”

Lyra nodded. “And women Scholars work alongside men in your world, so clearly they’re not expected just to stay separate from men except when they’re having their babies.”

“Right. There are still inequalities, but nothing like _this_. I’m sorry it’s like that here. And I’m sorry I didn’t think of this the last time we were together. I wasn’t in my right mind; I wanted you so much I could hardly think a full thought. I hope we didn’t…”

Lyra’s heart lurched oddly at his incomplete thought. She hoped they didn’t, too, but also…

“I don’t think so. I feel fine,” she told him. Her voice had softened without her permission. She didn’t know why her heart felt so full or why she almost felt sort of upset. She certainly didn’t want to be pregnant. Maybe one day—she’d always thought that, yes, maybe _one day_. But not now. She thought it was probably just the fact that they could even worry about something like this. She’d never thought they’d _ever_ have the opportunity to. It seemed so surreal to be lying beside Will talking about something like _pregnancy_. And a thought came to her unbidden: Will lying on her bed, a tiny newborn curled over his heart, his large, wounded hand patting its back…he would be such a good father, _nothing_ like Lord Asriel had been…he’d be good and brave and true, like Iorek, like a father ought to be. And she would be nothing like her mother. She would never abandon her child and she would hold it and sing to it and love it like a mother ought to…

She felt too moved by the intrusive thought to speak.

“I can bring a test next time I see you. Just in case. Unless you’re sure?”

“Sure. I’m sure. I mean—you can. If you want.” She wasn’t making much sense. She felt weirdly upset or maybe happy—she couldn’t make sense of her own emotions. She felt _full_.

“This is one of the things my world could bring to yours,” said Will. He pulled his fingers through her hair and pulled her back down into his embrace. Lyra burrowed into him and hid her face against his chest.

“And hamburgers,” Lyra muttered.

Will laughed. “I forgot you loved those so much. I’ll bring you one next time.”

She threw a leg over his and gripped him closely, soothed by every one of his heartbeats, encouraged by every one of his breaths. She was so glad he’d come back. She wanted to stay here with him forever. She had always wanted that.

“If we…I mean, if you wanted to…” it wasn’t like him to have a difficult time getting his words out. Lyra wondered what he was afraid of. Rejection? “I’ll worry about the birth control. You don’t need to. My world isn’t like yours; we don’t treat women like that, we have loads of ways to let couples decide if and when they want babies.”

Lyra listened calmly and attentively as he explained all the ways in his world. She was intrigued by some, disturbed by others, and baffled still by a few. But the way Will was talking about made sense, and anyway, she knew now wasn’t the time to even think about the sort of things that’d bombarded her mind before.

“ _If_ you ever wanted to be with me again, I mean,” he ended his spiel. “I’m not presuming anything. I know all this is…weird.”

Lyra was more shocked by that comment than anything else he’d said. “If I want to? _If_? Are you _mad_?”

He raised his heavy brows. “Quite possibly, actually, but what do you mean?”

She reached up and held his face in her hands. “ _If I want to_? That was one of the best things I’ve ever experienced in my whole life. I want to be with you like that every day until I die. I’ve been wanting you here so I could touch you again…so you could touch me…every moment. I never knew what I was missing out on, Will, but now that I do…I can’t imagine how I could ever love somebody other than you ever again. And I dunno why, but I feel like…I dunno. Like we’re meant to be together. Like that was the most _right_ thing we’ve ever done.”

He leaned his face into her touch. “Oh, Lyra, I felt the same way. But I didn’t know if…”

“I do. I did. Always.”

He reached up and cradled her hands in his larger ones. Her heart felt too big for her chest; it was choking her. When his dark eyes bore into hers, she felt like he was seeing everything she’d ever been and everything she ever would be. And she felt as if he loved every bit of it.

“It’s all I could think about when we were apart,” he muttered. His voice was magnetic, deep, and full of longing. It mirrored Lyra’s own heart.

“Me too. I drove Pan mad, I think, ‘cause I was always daydreaming and then, when I wasn’t doing that, I was working myself mad trying to find a way to see you again.”

“Kirjava’s been happy as a clam. She’s got the two things she’s wanted all along: Jade gone and you here.”

Lyra guessed _Jade_ was his girlfriend in his own world. It made her feel unfairly smug to know Kirjava preferred her over this Jade girl.

“Kirjava didn’t like her?”

“Kirjava actively sabotaged her.”

Lyra laughed aloud. _This_ was an experience she understood. “It doesn’t work, does it? Trying to have a relationship when your dæmon doesn’t approve. Pantalaimon was always so critical of any boy I ever looked twice at, too, except the one, and he only liked him ‘cause we’ve known him a very long time. I suspect they’re laughing at us right now and saying _we told them so_ , wherever they’ve run off to.” Lyra considered something else. “You know, when Pan ran off this morning, I was so worried. I felt…empty and scared. But I don’t worry at all when he runs off with Kirjava.”

Kirjava would look out for him and Pan would look out for her, and before the night had come, they would be back home.

She wouldn’t have minded lying in bed all day with him, but her stomach growled audibly a few moments later, and Will shifted them up into a sitting position.

“I’m hungry, too,” he told her. “And anyway, you need to take your antibiotics.”

“Yes, Doctor Parry,” she mocked. He rolled his eyes at her tone.

“So how does one get food here? Do your servants just…show up at a specific time? Do you ring for them? How does it work?” he questioned as they walked hand-in-hand towards her sitting room, Lyra leaning against Will every few steps to help take the weight off her injured foot.

“It works however I want it to, really,” she admitted. “I can send for them. They usually bring breakfast and I go to the hall for lunch and dinner. But if I don’t show up in the hall for a meal, they bring it here to me or to the library, since that’s usually where I am.”

“You’re a bit spoiled, you know that?”

She did know that so she nodded. She’d had the resources to live elsewhere after finishing her graduate degree, but she had chosen to come back to Jordan, and she was certain she’d be here for many more years. Nothing else felt like home quite like Jordan did (except for when she was with Will, and until now, that hadn’t been an option.)

“I’ll send for food, enough for both of us,” Lyra said. She walked over to a small table near the door and pressed the large button set upon it. It would send a sound to the kitchens. A second later, a voice sounded through the small speaker just above it.

“Yes?”

“Could I have lunch brought here? Enough for myself and a guest.”

“Certainly, Miss Lyra.”

She turned back to Will once she’d put the order in. He was shaking his head. “No birth control, but you’ve got that. Your world is strange. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy get waited on like this in my world.”

She shrugged. She didn’t find it odd at all; it was what she’d grown up with.

The food arrived quicker than Will had thought it would; he arched an eyebrow when the bell rang only a few minutes later. Lyra received the food and they sat across from each other at her small table to eat.

“I suppose I’ll be quite hungry when I go over to your world,” commented Lyra. She popped a grape into her mouth. “I only know how to make omelet, and there’s no telling if I even remember how to do that after all this time.”

“When you’re in my world, I’ll do the cooking,” he reassured her.

“Is that what we’ll do, then?” she wondered. “Stay in each other’s worlds until one of us starts feeling sick and then switch back?”

He nodded. “It’s what we’ll have to do. Our only other option is to live separately and visit each other every now and then and I don’t particularly like that idea.”

“Nor do I,” agreed Lyra at once. “I’ve missed you enough to last a lifetime. I don’t want to ever have to miss you again.”

He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “Nor do I,” he echoed.

She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and she wasn’t that hungry anymore. She tightened her hold on his hand and felt something flow between them, a charge of some sort, a pull. She met his eyes and struggled against the urge to fly across the table. He swallowed hard and seemed to be fighting something similar. Suddenly all she could think about was how beautiful he was and how wonderful it had felt to make love to him, how perfect and right…

Her cheeks warmed against her will as she replayed that night with him. His eyes seemed to darken. They were holding their hands tighter and leaning towards each other over the table, and nobody had said a word, but Lyra felt as if they were saying a lot. Her heart was pounding when he stood suddenly, his hands falling at his sides, and walked over to her side of the table. He extended his hands; Lyra reached out and took them. She felt acutely aware of every point of contact between their skin. He pulled her to her feet and dragged her in. She leaned her body against him, every line of hers against every line of his, and felt the heaviness of anticipation (and excitement) bloom within her. His hand pressed firmly against her lower back, keeping her close, and she found herself stroking his back, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, reaching up to comb her fingers through his thick hair…

It was the latter action that did him in. Before she could shake her heavy daze enough to say a word, he’d crushed his lips to hers, deep and dangerous and delicious, and she couldn’t get enough of him, not even when she’d backed them up to the sofa and pulled him down so he was leaning over her, not when she’d collapsed onto her back and dragged him onto her, not when his hands were under her clothes or hers were under his or her hands were fisted in his hair or his lips were on her neck. The zipper of her dress cut into her back as he reached between her and the sofa cushions and yanked it down, his hands everything _but_ steady now, her breaths coming in quick little gasps. She didn’t feel the pain of her zipper scratching her skin, and in fact, she heard herself whispering _yes, Will, hurry_ without having had the conscious thought to do so. She was trembling as she helped him tear her dress from her body, and he was trembling as she undid his buttons and slipped his trousers over his hips, and both of them were trembling together as he pressed his bare skin to hers. The fire had been lit so quickly and it had burned so brightly that Lyra halfway expected it to burn out in a moment, but their frantic passion persisted. They pressed their lips to each other’s skin, and Lyra’s hands grasped at his broad back, her nails biting into his skin for purchase every few moments, their hearts pounding in time together. She was thoughtless—she was every thought anyone had ever had. She was weightless—her every atom was singing with pleasure. She was nothing—she was everything. She was a heart without a body—she was a body intensely aware of her body. She was Lyra in a way she had never been Lyra before: utterly and completely vulnerable, honest, raw. She would have worshipped the man on top of her, and he would have worshipped her, and as they arched into each other’s touches, she felt like maybe they already were.

She had cast every thought but _Will_ from her brain, so she didn’t think twice about the conversation they’d had before about ‘contraceptives’, but as soon as they collapsed back on the sofa together, damp with sweat and gasping, they both remembered.

“Shit,” she heard Will murmur into her hair. It made her smile briefly to hear him swear. She could feel his heart pounding against her bare chest and she hugged him closer to her, affection overtaking every other emotion in her chest.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he growled. What an odd thing for him to say. Lyra wasn’t sorry about a thing.

“Why on earth are you sorry?” she asked softly. She pressed her nose against his collarbone and nuzzled his shoulder. The weight of his body was getting a bit suffocating, and he must’ve realized it, because he rolled them over onto their sides only a moment later.

He stroked her spine and kissed her forehead. “I didn’t think. We talked about contraceptives. I’ve never been so…mindless, I don’t know what comes over me, I didn’t even think to…”

Lyra leaned back just enough to crane her head up and kiss him. She didn’t really understand his guilt as this wasn’t really a concern in her world, but she tried her best to comfort him, anyway. “That’s okay. If you’re worried, I’ll take a Gyptian drink or I’ll have Serafina bring me some of her herbs or you can bring me one of your world’s tablets. It’s okay, I promise. It’s just as much my fault, really, and I don’t even regret it. I’d do it again. And again. And again. And again…” she punctuated each _again_ with a kiss to his lips, his jaw, his neck. He was practically putty in her hands after that. Any tension he’d felt seemed to melt away, just as it should. She was pleased as could be.

He leaned his cheek against hers a few minutes later. He turned his face and kissed below her ear afterwards. “Lyra?”

She was basking in his soft kisses, her eyes shut, her hands skimming lazily over his skin. “Hmm?”

“You’re really very beautiful. Do you know that?” he asked.

She smiled. She didn’t much care about looks and never had, but she liked that Will found enjoyment in hers.

“Yeah, most men think that I am,” she said honestly, though there was no trace of egotism in her tone. She didn’t care what those men thought, but she was far too clever not to notice the strange power she’d had over men ever since she became a woman (far too clever not to use it to her advantage on occasion, too.)

“I was surprised the first time I saw you. Do you know what I thought?” he asked.

In moments like that, she felt like she was in tune with every thought, every breath, every desire. But she nodded anyway.

“I thought you were every bit as beautiful as Mrs. Coulter was, but different—better. Unique, interesting, powerful—like you could look at your face for ages and still only grasp half of what makes it beautiful.”

Lyra felt a wave of pride wash over her. Every bit as beautiful as Mrs. Coulter? _More_ beautiful than her? It wouldn’t have meant anything coming from anybody but Will because she’d assume they were lying to her to flatter her, but she knew he wouldn’t lie to her, and so she felt the compliment root itself deep in her heart.

“There’s something magnetic about it, I lose my mind a bit when I’m with you, and I don’t know if you know that or if you learned how to do it on purpose—”

“No,” she assured him, surprised. But she felt like she sort of knew what he was talking about. She had seen her mother have that effect on men before. “But I feel that same pull towards you too, Will. So maybe you’re just reacting to the attraction I feel to you.”

“No way,” he swore at once, his voice serious. “I think you probably have this effect on most every man.”

“I don’t care about them at all. I care about you. And being with you is like nothing else in the world, Will. You make me feel…” she trailed off, unsure how to explain it, her throat closing with emotion.

“You make me feel that way, too,” he murmured, his lips pressing again to the skin beneath her ear. She smiled.

“Maybe we feel that way because we’re meant to be together. We’re meant to be making love every day, to be in each other’s arms, to be _together_.” She knew if they could see the Dust around themselves, there would be so much the entire room would appear to be burning with it.

“I was wondering the same thing.”

“So we shouldn’t fight it,” she whispered, and she felt a strange peace wash over her as she did, the same kind she used to feel when reading the alethiometer (back when it was effortless). She knew she was right, though she wasn’t sure how she did. “This is what’s meant to be, Will. Us.”

“Yes,” he agreed, his hands stroking down her back, over her hip, his lips kissing her throat.

She was too happy to question _why_ this was what was meant to be. What was the universe leading them towards? What destiny was lurking just around the bend? What else was there for Eve reborn to do?

“I love you,” she whispered.

He whispered the same words back to her and she felt aglow.

* * *

 

He couldn’t stay as long as she would like him to, and that knowledge ripped and tore at her heart, but she put on a brave face.

“And you’ll be back?” she asked again, her thin arms locked tightly around his frame. They had just returned from a stroll around the Jordan grounds and the delight she’d felt at _finally_ getting to show Will her home felt very jarring now in comparison to the distress his impending departure was causing her.

“As soon as I can. They have me working twelve-hour shifts the next four days, but then I’m off the next three, and I’ll spend them with you,” he murmured into her hair.

“In shifts, though,” Kirjava reminded Will. She and Pan had returned an hour prior and were snoozing together at the foot of the bed. “When we’re here too long, it makes us feel very weak in our own world. We couldn’t stay for three whole days…it wouldn’t be safe.”

Lyra hadn’t known that. It worried her. “Oh. In shifts, then, yes.”

Her heart was aching as he kissed her goodbye. She wanted to beg him to stay with her, but she knew it wasn’t possible. He had to get back to his own world and she had to get back to work.

He kissed her again, fierce and passionate, his large hands cradling her face. Lyra wanted to melt into his embrace and never be parted from him again.

“I’ll miss you every single moment,” he whispered. And Lyra’s eyes burned because she knew it was true, and she would miss him just as much. She leaned into him and buried her face into his shoulder. She exhaled heavily and allowed a few tears to leak past her floodgate. He continued speaking, but this time his voice was firm and serious. “Take your antibiotics—all of them. Put that cream on your foot like I showed you. Let the wound breathe at night. Wrap it up before you wear shoes. Try not to put too much pressure on it. If you start running a fever, go _straight_ to your Jordan doctor. Don’t wait. I mean it. Straight there.”

She nodded. She was too upset to speak. It took her a minute or so to compose herself enough for it.

“And you get some sleep. Don’t work yourself so hard,” she ordered.

“I’ll do my best.” His smile was small and sad. Lyra wanted to kiss it away and make a truer one take its place, but before she could do so, he disappeared from her arms.

She allowed herself a few minutes to cry and feel sorry for herself. But after those minutes passed, she wiped her cheeks, stood straight, and said to Pan: “Let’s get to work.”

* * *

 

He was halfway through suturing a deep laceration in a middle-aged man’s back when the curtains were pulled back for the tenth time that half-hour.

“Seventeen-year-old female, syncope episode, mild contusion to the head from her fall, vomiting, weakness,” a nurse rushed out.

He tied off the twenty-sixth stitch and went on to the next one. “CT her head, run an hCG test first, if that’s negative, do a full blood panel to check for abnormalities.”

The nurse nodded and left. He did three more stitches. The door opened again.

“Three-year-old boy, high fever, stiff neck—”

He paused his suturing and looked back at the nurse. “Start IV antibiotics. Did you check for Brudzinski sign or Kernig sign?”

“Brudzinski is present.”

“Facial rash?”

“No.”

“He needs a spinal tap to test for meningitis. I’m coming straight there; I’m nearly done. Start the IV antibiotics immediately.”

He had long ago learned to master his emotions while at work. He dealt with so many stressful and traumatic things just in one hour that if he let them get to him, he’d have lost his mind years ago. So his face didn’t show any emotion, and he didn’t say anything, but his stitching increased in pace a bit.

“Meningitis,” his patient muttered, his voice muffled into the hospital bed. “That’s a bad one, right?”

 _A bad one_. Will exchanged an exasperated look with the nurse assisting him with the procedure. She turned and stifled her laughter into her arm.

“Yeah,” Will affirmed.

“Will he be okay?”

_Do I look like a fortune-teller?_

“I always hope they will be.” He tied off the final stitch. “There we go. Thirty-two stitches. Next time you want to get into an argument, make sure there are no glass bottles nearby.”

“Ah,” the man said. He tried to look back over his shoulder to see his wound, but it was impossible. “Hardly felt it. Thanks.”

And Will was off. His shifts always flew by because he hardly had even a moment to think about anything but work. He did the spinal tap for the little boy, sent that off, got bombarded with a group of shaken but mostly just angry tourists involved in a bus crash, dealt with a heart attack, and then finally made his way to the fainting seventeen-year-old’s bedside. She was looking particularly horrific: her face was ashen and pallid, her lips cracked, and the bucket at her bedside indicated she’d been vomiting nonstop. Will grabbed her chart as he greeted her.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Parry. How are you feeling?”

She answered with a groan. He flipped through her chart. hCG levels high—pregnant, though early on. He figured. That could explain vomiting, weakness, and fainting, but not usually to this degree. CT showed no notable brain trauma from her fall. The nurses were waiting on her full blood panel results. He dropped the top page down and looked at the girl (Charlotte, her paperwork said.)

“When did all this start, Charlotte?” he asked.

The nurses had taken a detailed history of her symptoms during her intake, but it helped Will to hear it from the patients themselves. He sat at her bedside and listened calmly as she told him all about her morning. She made a point to give him very specific details— _I made tea with honey and cream, I wore my pink jumper, I rode the bus instead of walking—_ but then ghosted over other parts ( _I was in Marks and Spencer and I didn’t feel well and I fainted and then I woke up here)._ He knew instinctively that she was lying about something, and that there was more to this, but he wasn’t sure what the full picture was yet.

“Okay, had you felt like this at any point before today?” he asked.

She shook her head, her eyes widened earnestly. “No! I felt fine!”

He set her chart on his lap. “Because going by the bloodwork we did, you’re pregnant enough to probably have been having symptoms for a few weeks now. I don’t think it would have come on so suddenly and so intensely unless something is wrong, and that’s what we’ll need to rule out next—”

“Pregnant?”

He didn’t quite understand her tone. She sounded gutted, but she didn’t look surprised. How did that work?

“Did you know you were pregnant?” he asked her carefully, eyeing her expression closely.

“I—” she hesitated. Her eyes darted up towards the ceiling for a moment. “No,” she finally decided.

A lie. “Are you sure?”

“Yes?”

She was a horrible liar. “So you knew you were pregnant. How long have you known?”

She didn’t respond. Will used his gut and guessed. “Two weeks?”

Her eyes widened slightly. He had guessed closely. And with a sudden rush of clarity, it all made sense to him. He looked back at her chart with his new theory in mind. It fit. He looked back at Charlotte.

“You don’t want to be pregnant.” It wasn’t a question. Her lip trembled. She looked very terrified. For a second, Will almost gave her his typical spiel ( _you_ do _know how babies are made, right? You should be responsible_ ), but out of fear of being a hypocrite, he bit his tongue.

She shook her head mutely.

“And you somehow felt like you couldn’t go to a doctor for help, meaning you must have very religious people in your life who keep tabs on you, people you fear.”

She hid her face in her hands and began to cry softly.

“So you probably got some tablets or something from a friend who swore it would work. Only it made you very ill. Didn’t it?” he guessed.

Her body shook with sobs. “I-I-I b-bought a-a t-t-t-tea from a w-woman in a sh-sh-shop,” she wept.

Will rubbed wearily over his eyes with his mutilated hand. “I’m going to need the name of that tea, the ingredients, or a contact number for the woman you purchased it from.”

She nodded even as she wept. “A-A-Am I g-g-going to d-d-die?!”

He didn’t reach out to pat her shoulder because he could tell she would be one to fling herself at him and sob in his arms, and he didn’t have time for that.

“I shouldn’t think so. I need to know more about what you drank, though. Can you write down what was in it?”

She could. He left to check on his other patients and returned to her bedside afterwards to collect the paper. He looked down at the list of abrasive and toxic herbs and sighed.

“You’ll be okay. We’ll take care of you,” he told her. On his way out of her area, he gave the nurses instructions on what to do next and requested that a social worker come speak with her. No telling the sort of people she lived with if she felt pushed into doing what she did. She had a right to take care of her own body; Will felt irritated and worried on her behalf, which was odd, because he usually kept his emotions at bay during work. But it bothered him enough that he walked past his destination three times on his way back to another patient, and it wasn’t until he had the passing thought _she’s almost acting as if she’s living in Lyra’s world_ that he realized what was really bothering him. _Lyra_. She had said something about a ‘Gyptian drink’, hadn’t she? At the time, he hadn’t been too concerned with it, since it was something she’d done in the past and she’d clearly lived through it. But she had said something about taking it again. And what if that ‘drink’ was like Charlotte’s ‘tea’? What if it was something really toxic? He should’ve asked her more about it. What if she poisoned herself in an effort to keep from getting pregnant—what if it was his fault? And it was his fault, really; he was the practical one, the sensible one, and yet he was also the one who had let himself get so moonstruck and maddened that he didn’t think twice about something that should’ve been second-nature by now. Granted, Lyra hadn’t seemed concerned with it, either, but it wasn’t something she had been taught to handle in her world. His world was better than that. _He_ was better than that. He wondered quietly whether or not there might be a part of his subconscious that _wanted_ her to get pregnant. He didn’t consciously think that, and he recognized that that would truly be something tragic—considering their inability to be together in a real way—but he couldn’t explain to himself why he kept making the same mistake over again unless there was a tiny part of him that didn’t think it was a mistake at all. When they had first fallen in love, when they were very young, he had thought they might have kids once they were older. And granted, they were older now, but they had only just found each other, and they weren’t even _together_. So he very much hoped there wasn’t a part of himself so selfish and thoughtless to hope for something like that. Maybe it was just the idea of sharing something so permanent with Lyra that part of him liked. What could be more bonding than a child? And he desperately wanted to be bonded so tightly to her that nobody could tear them apart again. But—and here he felt a swell of pain as he thought it—a baby didn’t always lock people together forever. His existence hadn’t kept his father from disappearing. Lyra’s existence hadn’t kept her parents together.

Maybe he didn’t want that at all. Maybe it was as simple as his sensible teenage years coming back to bite him with a late dose of impulsive and reckless behavior.

No matter the reason, something would have to change. He would have to be better. He didn’t even know if he _could_ get her pregnant, but it was stupid to keep on taking the risk. He had brought the question up with Mary, and she had seemed confident that there was no way he could actually impregnate her when he wasn’t even really _there_ , but Mary also wasn’t in the room when he and Lyra were having these encounters: they felt incredibly real. Maybe they weren’t, maybe they _were_ just a figment of their imagination, but he would have to prepare as if they weren’t.

He had been standing outside the closed curtains of one of his patient’s beds, thinking so hard about Lyra that he hadn’t noticed his mind lightening and floating up. By the time he’d realized what he’d subconsciously allowed himself to do, he was elsewhere.

He was standing in a grand circular room with tall, domed ceilings and rows of stained glass windows. It was easy enough to recognize: a church. He wasn’t fully present yet himself, but he looked around for the person his mind had brought him towards. She was a few feet away, sitting calmly beside some sort of priest figure on a bench, and the priest figure appeared to be interrogating her. Why was Lyra here? What did they want?

He was torn. He wanted to check on Lyra, but he was also now standing/lying comatose inside A&E, and he needed to get back to his body. He hovered uncertainly in place for a few moments before his consciousness made up the decision for him. He floated bodiless towards where they were, still not there enough to be physical (which was probably a good thing, as materializing out of thin air might not be a good thing to do in the Church’s presence.)

He settled beside Lyra, close enough that were his physical, their arms would have been touching. She looked up briefly as he joined them, as if sensing him, but after a quick, confused look around herself, she turned back to the priest figure.

“Do you understand the risks as I have explained them to you?” the man prompted.

Lyra was looking at him with a steady, unperturbed gaze, but Pantalaimon was revealing her confusion. He was sniffing the air around them, and for a second, Will locked eyes with him and felt confident that he could see him.

“Certainly,” responded Lyra. “Only I’m not worried about eternal damnation.”

The man’s cheeks turned cherry red. “Oh, but you should be. You of all people should be. All the rumors surrounding you within our Church…both old rumors and new…and now we hear that you’ve been…consorting with a mysterious boy out of wedlock—”

Lyra’s face flushed. “That’s none of your bloody business!” she exploded, losing all semblance of composure. “Who told you that? Are you spying on me? ‘Cause the Master said your lot is _not allowed_ near my room!”

“I sent two of my clergymen to visit with you a few weeks ago. They spotted a man in your room…shirtless. In the wee hours of the morning, no less. I should think you would have more decorum.”

 _Damn_ , Will thought. He hadn’t even thought twice about it. He hadn’t realized at the time that her world was so oppressive that Lyra would suffer consequences if he was seen.  

“That’s _none_ of your business!” Lyra repeated hotly. The patches of uneven color on her cheeks were the only sign that she felt violated by the interrogation topic.

“The state of everybody’s soul is my business. I have taken a personal stake in yours, Lyra. I traveled days to be here to speak with you. My colleagues think I’m mad for it, but I believe every sinner can be redeemed, no matter their past actions. There is a spot for you in heaven, Lyra, in the beautiful kingdom our Authority has gifted us. You only need to repent your wicked ways and reform. Just as your mother did…”

“Yeah, before she began mutilating kids in the name of your Church, you mean?” asked Lyra. Her lip curled in disgust. Will felt a wild burst of love for her. “Forgive me, but I don’t have any interest in a ‘god’ who thinks _that’s_ okay but wants to smite me for taking a lover.”

She didn’t say out loud what Will knew she was thinking: _besides, your Authority is dead, I watched him die. And there is no heaven and there is no hell. There is a Land of the Dead, but I ended that, too. And just like Eve created Dust, I enabled it to stay around, and I’d do it again, and I was right, and you were wrong, and none of that will ever change._

And even though she hadn’t said it, he seemed to realize she felt no stakes at all in the situation. He changed tactics.

“Who was the boy?” he demanded, his voice shifting from casual friendliness to something distinctly threatening. Will bristled in response.

Lyra didn’t miss a beat. “Mark Ransom. He works in the gardens.”

“Liar,” the priest spat. “ _Who_ was the man?”

“Mark Ransom,” she repeated, slower this time, as if the man were daft. “He works in the gardens.”

For a moment, Will thought the priest might hit her. But he curled his fingers up and seemed to think better of it after Pan gave a low, menacing growl, his teeth bared and his long body curling protectively around Lyra’s neck. The priest’s mouse dæmon clearly didn’t like its odds because it made no move to react. Will wanted to kiss the pine marten’s head.

“My men saw him in your room. He was missing two fingers on his left hand. You’ve been seen with a boy missing two fingers on his left hand before, Lyra, and we don’t much like the rumors surrounding him and you.”

Lyra furrowed her brow, confused. “Oh, was Mark missing two fingers? I didn’t notice, you see. We were so busy with other things.”

The priest’s face seemed to swell with rage. He turned and pointed a chubby finger at her, furious.

“You sinful little brat! This is not a joke! This is your _soul_!”

“I’m not laughing,” countered Lyra calmly. She arched an eyebrow. “Who’s laughing, Father?”

He sputtered, his face reddening more with every second. Lyra took advantage of his loss of composure. She stood at once and smoothed the heavy skirt of her dress.

“Well, it’s been lovely talking with you, Father,” she said, and with what was probably the cheekiest social nicety Will had ever seen, she curtsied. The priest began visibly grinding his teeth. “Next time you want to have a chat about my soul, just send me a letter before you come all this way, won’t you?”

She was already walking towards the exit. Will drifted along after her as if they were tied together (as if they were one).

“I’m not finished with you, Miss Belacqua!”

“Silvertongue,” corrected Lyra, false cheerfulness in her tone. “And I’m finished with you. Cheers.”

She strolled right out of the church with such an air of confidence that no clergyman rose to stop her, though a few exchanged uncertain glances. As soon as she was out of the church, she began noticeably limping, which told Will she’d endured the pain enough to walk without weakness just for the sake of appearances. His heart ached with a strange mixture of worry and longing. Lyra limped over towards a cusp of trees near the back of the church, stopped walking abruptly, turned around—and then threw herself at Will.

As soon as her skin touched his, he felt grounded and corporeal. He had been certain he didn’t have a body until that moment, but he felt it now—the hard ground beneath his feet, the breeze against his face, the smell of nearby wisteria. Lyra’s soft body in his arms, her fragrant hair beneath his chin, her steady heartbeat against his.

“How long have you been able to see me?” asked Will.

“I could only see you from the corner of my eye ‘til just now, sort like you were there, but not there. I could smell you, though.” Will leaned back and looked down at her to arch an eyebrow. She smiled. “It’s a _good_ smell,” she amended.

He smiled back at her, amused. She reached up and touched his cheek lightly. “I thought you wouldn’t be back until the end of the week?”

“I’m not supposed to be. It was an accident, and I really do have to get back—I’m probably passed out on the floor in the middle of my shift right now—but I was worried about you.”

Lyra’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Me? About me? Why?”

He knew he didn’t have long. “Don’t drink that Gyptian drink, the one you told me about.”

Lyra looked at him in confusion. “What? Why? What do you mean?”

“Don’t drink it ‘til you let me look at it or at least see a list of what’s in it. There’s a girl I just saw and she poisoned herself with a drink like that and I don’t want you doing the same and—” she began to open her mouth to argue, so Will pressed forward seriously—“I know you drank it before and if you really want to of course I can’t—and wouldn’t— stop you but as your _doctor_ , Lyra, I’d like to look at it first. Not as your lover. Just as your doctor.”

She looked torn between amusement and irritation. “Well, if it’s as my _doctor_ …”

“It is.”

“Was that all you were worried about? Me poisoning myself?”

“Yeah,” he said, though it wasn’t _entirely_ the truth.

“You didn’t even need to worry. I don’t need to take it anymore ‘cause I know I’m not pregnant.”

His reaction was cautious optimism. “That’s great. How do you know that?”

She lifted an eyebrow like she had when she was talking to the priest. “Women don’t have cycles when they’re pregnant, correct?”

 _Oh_ , he thought. Genuine relief pierced through his anxiety a moment later. He smiled. “Right. That’s good.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t worried.”

“Me neither,” he lied. In his world, it was quite a common and understandable worry to have, but Lyra’s world seemed to have an odd sort of _if it happens, it happens_ mindset about it all that Will just couldn’t understand. He swept his fingers through her hair and pressed a tender kiss between her eyes, his impending departure softening every inch of his heart. “How’s your foot?”

“Better, I think. Still hurts, but I haven’t had a fever, and it looks less swollen and red.”

He pressed his lips to hers this time. “Good,” he murmured against her mouth.

Leaving her was excruciating, but he was also painfully aware of the trouble he was certainly causing himself in his own world, so he shared nearly five goodbye kisses with her, promised to see her soon, and then allowed his mind to snap back to its rightful home. Just as he’d suspected, he came to on the floor of the A&E, three nurses leaning over him worriedly and a colleague shining a light into his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he said at once. He sat up and went to stand.

“Hang on!” a nurse, Gwen, scolded him. She was a tough woman in her late fifties who had seen more than Will could imagine in her thirty years as an A&E nurse. She shoved his shoulder back down with surprising strength, forcing Will back on his back. “Not so quick. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” lied Will. “I think it’s from not eating. I’ve been skipping meals because I’ve been so busy.”

“C’mon and we’ll run some tests,” his colleague said. His tone was weirdly gentle like he thought something was seriously wrong with Will. Will resisted his offer, though he let him pull him up to his feet.

“No, that’s fine, thanks,” he said. Part of him worried they’d find something weird in his blood that he wouldn’t be able to explain from all his traveling between worlds. “I feel fine, really. If it happens again, I’ll have a full workup done. I’m just woozy and hungry. Can you cover me for ten minutes? I’ll go straight to a vending machine and get a fizzy drink and something sweet.”

They wanted to argue, but seeing as though Will was already walking off towards the nearest vending machine, they didn’t have much opportunity to. He bought a fizzy drink like he said he would, but instead of sitting down to drink it and get his blood sugar up, he paced the stairs with it in his hand.

This was good. This was good. He told himself: _it’s good that she’s not pregnant._ But what did that mean? Did it just mean they were lucky and their recklessness hadn’t come back to bite them? Or did it mean that he really _wasn’t_ there? Maybe it really _was_ just their imaginations at work. It was all just a bit _too_ lovely, after all. Surely being with somebody couldn’t _really_ be like that…it never had been for Will. And, really, who knew whether any of it was real? Maybe it was all his imagination. Maybe…

 _Stop_ , he scolded himself. The voice sounded a lot like Kirjava, and for a moment, he was crippled by a desire to go home and curl up with her and talk through their problems. But he had work to do, and people to help, and his problems would have to wait.

He drank his can of carbonated sugar and went back to his job, but the back of his mind never strayed far from Lyra.

* * *

 

It came to her while she was lying on the brink of sleep in the bathtub, one small thought followed at once by a blinding moment of clarity. She gasped aloud and slipped down in the tub, nearly submerging herself. Pan heard the ruckus from the sitting room.

“I know what part of it means,” she said, her voice trembling. She held onto the edges of the porcelain tub, her mind spinning so fast her mouth couldn’t keep up. “We’ve been chunking it together all wrong, Pan, we’ve been doing it all wrong…the first six build upon each other and it’s not pairs or units of meaning, it’s a long _string_ of it, and I don’t know how the newer symbols fit in just yet, but the first six— compass, candle, bull, beehive, globe, and elephant—they are all intertwined!”

Pan sat on the floor just beside the tub, looking up at her with an excited expression. “How do you know?!”

“I dunno. I don’t know, Pan, but I know. I was lying here, about to fall asleep, thinking about everything _but_ the alethiometer—” which basically meant she was thinking about Will—“and the thought just came to me like somebody put it right in my mind. See, the compass, the candle, the bull, the beehive, the globe, the elephant—they’re all saying this: the path—door, if you will—we’ve been looking for—the compass and the candle are the path—door—because a meaning of the compass is a destination and the candle is a path, and the bull is representative of stubbornness like I thought at the start—that’s there to tell us it’s about something we’ve been trying to figure out for such a long while—and then the beehive and globe and elephant add onto it! The door we’ve been looking for for so long is located somewhere at a populated hub to other locations in Africa!”

She was absolutely glowing with pride and excitement come the end of her spiel. Pantalaimon was struggling to process everything she’d just shared. He scampered up to perch on the edge of the bathtub.

“Okay, so the beehive is the hub, and the globe means that it’s a hub to other places in the world, and the elephant is telling us _where_ it is: where there are elephants, which is somewhere in Africa,” he clarified slowly.

“Yes. _Yes_. Pan, I’m sure of it. I’m positive. It came to me like it used to. Oh, Pan, I wish I knew how I made it do that! I missed it so much—I hope that happens again—and this is great because this is what we were already close to deciding when we were using the books and figuring out the hard way, which means we’ve been doing this _right_! We had most of this pieced together only we were thinking too hard about the elephant and making it more complicated than it needed to be!” She held onto the edges of the tub and stood up too quickly; the hot water had made her woozier than she’d been aware of, and she stumbled and nearly fell. She had to breathe through her vertigo for a moment and fight the swell of nausea, but as soon as her ears stopped ringing and her pulse evened out, she cautiously straightened. She stepped out of the tub and stood shivering on the mat, her foot aching a bit from the pressure, her heart fluttering once more in excitement. “We’ve got to go, Pan.”

He had only just recovered from her near-fainting episode himself, but when she yanked her bathrobe on and set off for her bedroom, he quickly darted after her.

“To Africa? Do you realize how big of an area that is? We have to narrow it down first or else we’ll spend decades trying to search every single country and every single city—Lyra! Slow down!”

Ignoring her dæmon’s scolding, she continued throwing items blindly into a suitcase.

“Well we know it’s going to be a place that is a hub of some sort for people all over the world, which means it’ll be an aërodock or a shipping port, and we know it’s where there are elephants, so it’s probably one of the southern countries in Africa, maybe Zimbabwe—probably Zimbabwe—and—”

“But what do the other symbols in the answer mean?” challenged Pantalaimon. He crawled into her suitcase and began pulling all her clothes back out of it. She glowered at him. “The camel, anchor, angel, apple, baby, tree?”

“I dunno yet, but it’s not important!” She snatched her old tartan skirt from Pan’s paws and threw it back into her suitcase. He countered by yanking it back out again. “Pantalaimon!”

“Lyra!” he shot back in the same tone. “You don’t know that it’s not important! It very well could be! And we don’t need to go all the way across the world before we know everything the alethiometer is trying to tell us!”

Her frustration crested suddenly and without warning. She threw a ball of socks hard at her opened suitcase, narrowly missing Pan. “Why are you being like this?! This is what we’ve been working towards all along! To find a way back to Will! And now I know whereabouts it is and you’re being—being— _awful_!”

She was so angry that she was shaking. After staring Pan down for nearly a full minute, she felt angry tears prick her already-burning eyes. As soon as they did, Pan leapt towards her. She had already opened her arms to receive him. She cradled him to her chest and buried her face in his fur.

“I w-want to find them,” she whispered to her dæmon. A few tears spilled over and splashed into his fur.

He nuzzled his face against her arm. “Me too. I do, too. But I don’t think we should run off anywhere. I don’t know why, but I just feel like we shouldn’t. There’s more that we don’t know and it could end up changing everything. It could _all_ build upon each other, every symbol, I mean. These last few might change the meaning of the first ones. We have to stay and try harder.”

And she knew he was right, and that was part of the problem. She didn’t want him to be right. She wanted to run off to Africa that very hour. She wanted to _do something_. Sitting around looking at books was getting so suffocating…she just wanted to be with Will and Kirjava already. Permanently. It had never felt more pressing than it did right then.

She sat down weakly on the edge of the bed and set Pan in her lap. Her foot was aching and she was beginning to feel woozy again. She bowed her head and breathed in time with Pantalaimon, her head spinning with what felt like hundreds of thoughts at once. She suddenly felt very tired. Her sudden hope (and then her renewed disappointment) had exhausted her in every way a person could be exhausted.

“I’m tired, Pan,” she admitted, her voice small.

“I know,” he said, and she knew that he did. “Maybe we need to calm down and take things slower. At least we get to see Will and Kirjava now, even if it’s not every day, even if it’s in a weird real-but-not-real way. Maybe you’re pushing yourself too hard. When it all clicked for you when you were in the bath…maybe that was because you weren’t forcing it for once. You were just relaxing. You should relax more. All the sleepless nights and nonstop studying…maybe that’s not what we need to be successful. Maybe we need patience.”

Well, that had certainly been the case back when she could read the alethiometer by grace. She had never been able to force anything; it had come to her naturally at its own pace, and back then, she’d been content to let it, because it was _easy_. She hadn’t felt like her success depended on her ability to study, drill, and memorize. She just didn’t feel confident like that anymore. She had been working herself too hard lately.

“I guess so,” she said grudgingly. She scooted up so she was lying against the headboard and reached for _Alethiometer Sequences and Patterns_. “We’ll study in bed rather than in the library. How’s that?”

Pantalaimon laughed and Lyra caught herself giggling along with him.

“It’s better, I suppose,” he decided. He looked happy enough as he stretched out beside her and set his paws on the opened pages of the book. “Let’s start with the next three symbols. Do they have any significance when they’re grouped like that?”

Lyra and Pan worked well into the night from her bed, making notes as they stumbled upon promising bits of information, talking out any and every idea that came to their heads. By the time Lyra remembered she hadn’t had a meal, it was nearly nine, and she wasn’t feeling up to eating anyway. She and Pan fell asleep atop their book.

* * *

 

The first thing Will did after work on Thursday was stop by a street vendor he and Lyra had once been to over a decade prior. He ordered four hamburgers, rolled the bag down tight to keep them warm, and then hurried to his flat.

“Ready?” Kirjava greeted. She was excited; Will had never seen her that restless. She paced around his legs in dizzying circles while he got everything in order. He wrote down the exact date and time on a notepad he left for Mary, he watered his plants, he made sure his windows and doors were locked, and then he hurried to his bedroom. He changed into pajama bottoms, packed the bag with food into a shopping bag to keep it from getting grease everywhere and then put that bag into his already-packed duffel, slipped underneath his covers, and let his mind drift upwards. He didn’t know if it was practice or eagerness to blame, but he slipped into Lyra’s world easier and quicker than he ever had before.

He felt quite solid from the first step he took. She wasn’t in the sitting/dining area, but he knew she was home because he always materialized close to her.

“Lyra?” he called loudly. He was impatient to see her again. Their time apart had seemed to crawl by at a torturous pace. He pulled the bag of food from his duffel and set it on the small table next to an empty plate. A second later, he heard the loud sound of purring and pouncing from the corridor: Kirjava had found Pan.

“Pan?” Will asked. He carried his bag with him as he headed towards the small corridor. Before he could investigate fully, he saw Pantalaimon rush towards him. He looked down just as the pine marten turned and walked between Will’s legs, rubbing affectionately against his ankles, his furry face happy and excited. Will’s heart glowed.

“Hey, Pan,” he greeted. He stooped over and set his left hand out. Pan arched up and rubbed his back against it and Will stroked the length of the dæmon, knowing Lyra could feel the delight of it all, wherever she was.

“We’ve been waiting for ages,” Pantalaimon told Kirjava and Will. He bounced over and jumped atop Kirjava, sending her rolling onto the carpet. Will watched the two playfully wrestle about for a few moments, and their joy was his joy.

“Where is she?” Will asked Pan curiously. He stepped past the dæmons and pushed into Lyra’s bedroom. He set his bag down on the floor beside the dresser.

“Bath,” he heard Pan say. He’d joined Will in the room. “She’s meditating.”

Will looked down at Pantalaimon. “She’s _what_? Does that mean something else in your world?”

“I don’t think so…she’s clearing her mind and relaxing,” explained Pantalaimon. He jumped up onto the bed and Kirjava followed. “She’s been getting bursts of clarity in the bath. We’ve made loads of progress on the alethiometer’s answer, thanks to the book you stole and Lyra’s meditating, but there are still a few more symbols we’re not clear on.”

Will’s heart rate increased with excitement. “Progress? As in…you’ve got an idea where the door might be?”

“We’ve got a _very_ good idea where the door might be,” Pantalaimon corrected slyly. Will grinned. Kirjava showcased his joy as she pounced atop Pantalaimon; this started their playful, somewhat flirtatious wrestling again, and not for the first time, Will wondered exactly what their dæmons got up to when they ran off alone. Not enough to ask, of course, just as Kirjava never asked him any details about what he and Lyra got up to on their own. Some secrets were good.

Despite having made love to her twice now, he wasn’t sure if it was okay for him to barge into the bathroom while she was bathing, so he knocked gently on the half-closed door with his left hand.

“Lyra? It’s me,” he called.

He heard a loud splash like Lyra had just dropped something into the bath. A second later, she called him in. Will curled the three fingers of his left hand up to make a fist, suddenly feeling embarrassingly nervous. It was one thing to kiss her, to feel her, to delight in her body and have her delight in his—and it was another to walk into a bright bathroom and see her completely naked in an unrushed, non-sexual context. That was something he hadn’t done yet and he was afraid he’d embarrass himself by staring, or blushing, or—worst case—losing control of himself. Without even considering the love he felt for her, which was an added complication, she was a beautiful woman, and he wasn’t blind or immune to her magnetic charm.

He had deliberated too long.

“Will?” she called again, sounding a bit nervous herself this time. Maybe she thought he’d gone away again. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m coming in,” he told her, partially as a last opportunity for her to tell him to wait. She didn’t. So he pushed the door open completely, stepped into the small, warm bathroom, and let his eyes seek her out. The tub was in the center of the room. It was a deep bathtub with tall sides, so from his angle, he could only see the back of her head, her hair—damp and curling at the edges and spilling golden over the edge of the tub—and her arm resting on the left side of the tub, her skin damp and glowing in the candlelight. She turned and looked over her shoulder as he entered, her blue eyes sparkling as she smiled.

“Hi,” she said, and then: “Are you shy now?”

He cleared his throat. “No.”

“You’ve seen me naked before,” she reminded him. She looked intrigued by his hesitation: her eyes studied his probingly.

“Not all at once like this,” he replied.

She arched an eyebrow. She seemed unsure whether to be offended or amused. “Afraid you won’t like what you see?”

“Afraid I’ll like it too much,” he said honestly.

She was pleased by that answer. She lifted her hand off the edge of the tub and beckoned him over. In her other hand, she lifted something heavy from the water.

“C’mon, I want to show you something,” she said. “I can get out of the tub if you’ll be more comfortable, but it will work better in here.”

Feeling foolish, he shook his head. “No, stay,” he said. “I’m not uncomfortable. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with me being in here, is all.”

With his heart beating hard, he walked over towards her. As he neared, he tried to keep his eyes on her face so she wouldn’t think he was being rude or perverted. He didn’t want to be the sort of man that would fit in in her world, a man who didn’t care about women as individuals, who saw bodies first and minds later. That wasn’t who he was—that wasn’t who his mum had raised him to be, wasn’t who his father would have created—and he didn’t want her to ever feel like it might be. But as Lyra looked softly back at him, her expression so surprisingly gentle and exposed, Will realized she would never think that of him. She trusted him wholeheartedly, and he trusted her the same, so he let his eyes drift down her body, taking time to skim over the lines and curves of her skin, at the delightful parts he’d already seen, at the delightful parts he’d only touched. She was extraordinarily _pretty_ ; he found her delicate femininity as enticing as it was interesting, for her spirit was everything but delicate, and she was one of the strongest people Will had ever known. And, as he’d figured, he was at a loss to find one thing he didn’t like about her, one thing that didn’t draw him in and attract him to her. By the time his eyes made it back to hers, hers had darkened a bit in a look Will was becoming quite familiar with. And maybe he wasn’t doing that great of a job controlling himself after all.

“Hi,” he heard himself say, his voice gravelly.

She smiled. “Hi,” she said back. He grinned like an idiot. She reached her hand out and he took it in his. Her skin was hot and wet. “If you joined me, would it make you go back to your own world? Like when they poured water on you in yours?”

His heart quivered with longing. “I don’t know,” he said, honest, “but I’d like to try it. If it does, I’ll come right back.”

The tub was plenty big enough for two people if they wanted to curl around each other, which Will and Lyra very much did. He felt less embarrassment taking his own clothes off, though he did find himself watching her reaction very closely from the corner of his eye. She studied him intently with a look close to the look she wore when she was looking at her alethiometer, like she was trying to learn his body by memory, and Will fell in love with her intense, affectionate gaze.

Water sloshed over the edges as he stepped into the tub and lowered himself in beside her. She turned over to face him, lying on her side, and he quickly scooted up so that he was leaning against the angled wall of the tub. Once he was settled, she curled up next to him with half her body draped over his. _This_ part felt more familiar: he was more accustomed to the sensation of her naked skin on his than the sight of it. The deep, warm water enveloping them was a different experience, though, and he decided rather quickly that this was something he’d like to do often.

Lyra must’ve felt the same way. She gave a small, pleased sigh and he felt her body relax so totally against his that he could’ve almost pinpointed the moment the tension left her muscles. He felt equally relaxed. There was a calming scent hanging heavy in the air—lavender and something else, perhaps something citrus—and it made his head feel wonderfully hazy. He stroked the smooth skin of her back and looked down at her, admiring her beauty, admiring the positive turn his life had taken to lead him here to this moment.

“Oh, I bloody love this,” she said, voicing precisely what he was thinking, and he laughed out loud. He kissed the top of her hair and discovered that the wonderful smell was coming from _her_.

“I think we should do this every day,” he murmured.

She turned her face and kissed his chest. “Yes,” she whispered into his wet skin. She stretched an arm up to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. He shivered a bit involuntarily. “How have you been?”

“Doesn’t even matter,” he admitted. “I’m wonderful now.”

“Me, too,” she said. She pressed another kiss to his skin. For a second, he thought she might be carrying them towards something quite different than cuddling, but she gave him one more kiss and then sat up abruptly. Will tried not to feel disappointed. He watched as she leaned over him and reached over the edge of the bath closest to him. She lifted up what he recognized at once as the alethiometer, but it was in a strange waterproof bag. It was plastic-but-not-plastic, with a translucent and waterproof appearance, but more of a fabric-texture than a plastic texture. Will hadn’t ever seen anything like it. He reached out and pressed his fingertips to the bag curiously. It felt similar to satin.

“I want to show you something,” Lyra told him. She wedged her shoulders in between Will and the opposite bath wall so that they were sitting side by side. She cradled the alethiometer in her hands and looked back at Will. “Ask me something I don’t already know.”

He hesitated. Something she didn’t already know? He replayed the days they’d spent apart and picked something at random. “Tell me what my mum made for dinner on Tuesday.”

Lyra turned to her alethiometer and began turning the dials quickly, her eyes flashing over the symbols quicker than Will could even make out two or three of them. He alternated between watching her and watching the alethiometer. He couldn’t keep up with the movements of the hands, so he was content to watch Lyra’s absorbed expression instead. She was unfathomably endearing with her blue eyes intent, her golden hair dark with water and plastered to her face, her cheeks rosy from the bathwater. They sat in peaceful silence for nearly four minutes before she gave a small shudder and came out of her trance. She turned and looked up at Will expectantly, her face glowing with pride.

“Your mum made spaghetti bolognaise! It was loads better than the last time she did. I think you had three helpings. Is that true?”

He laughed loudly, delighted. “Yes! You didn’t need your notes or your books!”

“I know, I know!” she said, trembling with excitement. “Will, I don’t know why exactly, but it’s so much easier for me when I’m in the bath. I think it’s that I’m relaxed and calm. It makes more sense—I’m able to sort of…access all the information I’ve spent all these years studying without harping over it. It feels natural. I even could tell the alethiometer was a bit irritated with me for asking about something trivial like dinner and it’s been ages since I could feel its moods.”

“This is _great_ ,” he beamed. He opened his arms to her and she threw herself half on top of him. He closed his arms to hold her body to his and kissed her lips. She infused their kiss with joy, and relief, and excitement; he felt they were feeling the same things, sharing the same thoughts. He couldn’t believe how close they were getting to being reunited. He couldn’t believe how wonderful his life was turning out to be. They had a shot at a proper future together now. They could live together, get married, have a family, grow old together—all the things he’d felt cheated out of when they were forced apart. They could…

Will was overcome by a powerful swell of emotion. He held her tighter and hid his face into her fragrant hair. “You could meet my mum.”

“Meeting your mum is the very first thing I want to do in your world. The very first thing!” Lyra said. And oh, he had to kiss her then, because he knew she meant it—and he couldn’t even express to her how much that meant to him.

“She will love you, Lyra,” Will whispered against her lips, his heart pounding away with desire and love and a dozen other equally strong and forceful emotions. “She will love you so much.”

She met his eager kisses with equal fervor, pausing only to say: “The second thing I want to do in your world is get hamburgers.”

Will—thinking about the four waiting in the kitchen for her—laughed. He kissed her nose. “And go to the cinema?”

“I’m seeing four a week. That ought to make up for missed time. And I’m going to eat popcorn and hot dogs every time. And have Coke.”

He kissed just under her jaw. “On that note, there’s something _I_ want to show you.”

“Is it right here in this bathtub?” she asked hopefully.

“No, it’s in the kitchen, but I promise it’s worth the walk.” He remembered her injury as soon as he thought about walking. “How’s your foot? Let me see. I hope you’ve been leaving it out of the bath some; it’s not good for it to be wet all the time.”

“I have been,” she said defensively, though Will could tell she was lying. Patients always lied. She pulled her foot up and grabbed it, holding it in place so Will could lean forward and inspect the wound. The new skin that was trying to form over the wound was so waterlogged it would probably tear like tissue paper at the slightest pressure, but it didn’t look inflamed or swollen anymore.

“Prop your heel on the edge and let it dry before you put pressure on it,” he ordered. “It looks better. You’ve been taking your antibiotics?”

“Yes, but I don’t like them at all,” she said. She jutted her chin out stubbornly as if daring him to contradict her. “My infection tablets in my world never make me feel like these do.”

He furrowed his brow. He turned his attention away from her foot (she had propped it where he’d ordered so the wound could dry some). “What do you mean? Are you having side-effects?”

She nodded. “I hardly have an appetite and I feel woozy a lot, like that feeling you get when you’ve been spinning around and you’re about to be sick, but it passes quickly only to come back at random times. And I’ve been very tired.”

None of it was surprising. “Antibiotics do often cause appetite changes and nausea. Your wooziness—that could be nausea that you’re feeling.”

“No, it’s dizziness.”

“Nausea and dizziness can feel a lot alike,” he said.

“Nausea doesn’t make you fall over.”

“No,” Will agreed. His brows furrowed again. “It doesn’t. You’ve been falling over?”

“Once or twice. When I stand up too fast. But I don’t have that much longer left to take the medicine, do I?”

Fighting off infection could make one fatigued, so he wasn’t too worried about that, but the dizziness was odd. He would have to check his pharmaceutical book to see if dizziness was a rare side-effect for that particular type of antibiotic. It wasn’t one known to cause it, so unless she was having an allergic reaction—which she couldn’t be or else she would’ve been much worse by now—it must be tied into her fatigue. 

“No, not much longer,” he reassured her. He frowned as he considered something else. “You might not appreciate my surprise for you if you don’t have much of an appetite.”

She figured it out. “You brought hamburgers?!”

“I did. And Coke.”

She pulled her foot down from the edge. “I can find enough appetite to eat a hamburger.”

He laughed.

* * *

 

She couldn’t find _much_ appetite. She scarfed down half of it, seemingly driven by the idealized memory she had of her first hamburger, and then stopped. She set it down slowly, looking at it as if it had gravely betrayed her. Will set his own down, too.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Appetite gone?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I was really excited at first but now I don’t feel like finishing it at all. Will it keep if I wrap it back up and put it in the ice box?”

“Yeah, it should be all right. I’m sure your servants can heat it up for you. You’ve got ovens?”

She scowled half-heartedly. “Of course we’ve got ovens, we’re not peasants.”

He held his hands up defensively. “Just checking.”

She reached for the Coke he’d brought and took a tentative sip. After a brief moment, she took another. And then another.

“Better?” Will guessed.

She hiccupped. A bit of Coke sloshed out of the can and hit her hands; she wiped the back of them on her dressing gown. “ _This_ I can do. I forgot how great these are.”

She drank her entire can in less than ten minutes and then Will passed her another. He watched with interest as she immediately began sipping at that one, too.

“You don’t drink enough water,” he guessed. Maybe she was dehydrated; that’d explain the dizziness, nausea, and fatigue. He made a mental note to ask Pantalaimon about it later.

“Water doesn’t taste like _this_ ,” she said, her eyes filled with wonder and locked on the Coke can in her hands.

Will loved that she hadn’t lost her childlike wonder. It was as endearing now as it’d been years and years ago. He decided that he’d keep her stocked on Cokes as long as she wanted them—empty sugars and calories be damned. If she wasn’t eating much or drinking much, Coke would be better than nothing.

She took his hand after he’d finished eating. “I want to show you something else,” she said.

And he was treated to the most entertaining tour of a college he’d ever been on in his entire life. Lyra dragged him below the college chapel into a crypt that was damp and musty but made Lyra’s eyes light up with mischievousness; she half-bullied him into climbing up onto the roof above the library where they took turns counting birds and Pantalaimon showed Kirjava how to jump from roof to roof; she dragged him into the Retiring Room and became so overcome with emotion that she shoved him against the wardrobe doors and snogged him ‘til he was weak in the knees. It was only approaching footsteps—and Pan’s nervous scolding—that kept them from ripping at each other’s clothes; they had darted out of the room giggling like teenagers only to find a particularly shaded tree in the Library Gardens where they could be alone. Will knew for a fact that quite a few people wandered past them as they lay there kissing and holding each other, their dæmons equally cozied up, but nobody said a thing to them. Probably these were enlightened people not affiliated with the Church who cared about Lyra and her happiness.

They stumbled home (home? Was he thinking of her room as _home_ now?) wrapped up in each other’s arms, pausing every time they passed a bench to kiss and let Lyra take weight off her foot. By the time they crashed into her room, they were pulling at each other’s clothing and hair, their breaths coming in quick, needy gasps. But Will kept some of his wits about him this time, and they were responsible, and he was glad to find that the encounter was just as blissful and consuming as the others had been. He hoped it would always feel that way.

Afterwards, Lyra sighed against his skin. “Do you have to go back?”

The question surprised him. He hadn’t said anything about leaving right then. “No. Not yet. I’ll be fine for a while more.”

She snuggled closer. “Usually when I’m this happy you end up going away. I think it’s the universe’s private joke.”

He held her tightly to him, so tight he could feel each of her ribs pressing against his chest. “I’m not going anywhere yet, and even when I do, I’ll be back in a few hours. That ought to be enough time to keep my real body healthy. I’ll drink water, eat, sleep, and then I’ll be back to you. And even when I go back for my work week, I’ll be back here as soon as it’s over. Always. Until we can find each other. I promise.”

He slept with her that night and they didn’t roll out of each other’s arms once. He had never been so happy.

* * *

 

They fell into an easy and enjoyable routine, and because of that, Lyra found herself getting complacent.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to find him anymore; that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It was just that the main motivator from before—her bone-deep longing for him—was less nagging than before: she got to spend nearly three whole days of every week with him in a way that felt real, even if it wasn’t. She got to make love to him as often as they felt like it (which was often); she got to take him wherever she pleased; she got to go to sleep with him by her side and wake up with him in the same place. It was easy to forget that it wasn’t real. It was easy to feel like she’d already found what she was looking for. And with three full days each week dedicated to Will, her time to seriously interpret the alethiometer’s answer dwindled. She rarely stayed in the library for days at a time now and she rarely fell asleep over books. She studied all day the four days Will was in his own world tending to his own life, but it was never with the same negligent mania that had obsessed her for years.

So one would think her health would be improving, but that was not Lyra’s experience. She stopped working herself so hard, but her exhaustion continued. She stopped skipping meals, but still her alternating lack of appetite and nausea persisted. She sipped on Cokes all day long, but she still had moments of vertigo that made her stumble. She tried to keep it hush when she was with Will because she never wanted to waste any of their time together on her whining and his subsequent fussing, but after three weeks of increasing discomfort despite all the home remedies she tried, she was beginning to get fed up—and worried. And so was Pantalaimon. He harassed her and even threatened to tell Kirjava if she didn’t tell Will soon. Lyra felt his concern was out of proportion, and sometimes she caught him examining her with a knowing look like he knew something she didn’t. It made her feel frightened.

It was Pan’s serious threat and odd behavior that pushed her towards honesty. When Will arrived on Thursday of that following week, Lyra didn’t even pretend to feel up for anything more than lying in fetal position on her bed. She felt the mattress shift as he sat down beside her. His large hand stroked over her hair.

“Lyra? Are you ill?”

Lyra could hear Pantalaimon whispering with Kirjava from the end of the bed. A moment later, Kirjava rubbed herself against Lyra’s healed foot, purring affectionately. Lyra shivered and looked down at the cat; she was peering at Lyra with concern. When she looked back at Will, his expression was nearly identical.

“I might be,” Lyra finally said. It was as honest as she knew how to be. “I haven’t been feeling well at all, Will.”

He heard the way her voice trembled. All at once, it all seemed to crash into her. The discomfort, the stress, and there at the back of her mind, the uncomfortable realization of what Pan clearly suspected was wrong with her.

Will stretched out beside her on the bed and pulled her close. He rested his cheek against her forehead in a sweet, dual-purpose gesture, comforting her and also feeling her temperature.

“You don’t feel feverish. What’s wrong? How long have you felt ill?”

“Weeks,” she admitted, and her voice trembled again, harder. The tears were there just waiting to be shed. She didn’t want to give into it. “I feel sick and tired all the time, Will, and other things are wrong, and I…” she broke off and buried her face into his chest so she could cry.

“ _Weeks?_ You told me you were feeling better since you finished the antibiotics.” He sounded a bit wounded by her betrayal.

“I lied,” she murmured around her tears. “I didn’t want you to fuss over me.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he scolded. She knew he was right. She didn’t argue with him. “I need you to sit up and tell me what’s wrong. I can’t help you ‘til I know.”

His sternness gave her the strength to compose herself. She sat up and wiped at her cheeks. She met his fierce eyes and told him everything. She told him about every weird feeling or symptom she’d been having, every remedy she’d tried that had failed her, every change she had noticed. Will listened with an unreadable expression, his lips pressed into a tight line, his eyes darting around the room as he thought. She remembered him telling her that he used the same part of his brain he’d used to wield the subtle knife to make diagnoses, so when she saw that familiar look of concentration in his gaze, she knew what he was doing. And somehow, instinctively, she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“I think you’re pregnant,” he told her, his voice oddly detached and clinical. Lyra felt her chest seize up with panic at the word. Pantalaimon immediately flowed up into her arms and nuzzled her neck comfortingly. She held him so tight it nearly hurt both of them and tried not to succumb to tears again.

“I dunno how because I’ve had my cycle since the times we’ve made love without your ‘contraceptives’,” she insisted, her voice trembling yet tenacious. “I don’t understand. They must not work.” She was desperate for someone or something to blame, and the contraceptives from his world seemed as good a target as any.

He looked pained for a moment like he’d only just realized something crucial too late. He rubbed over his eyes wearily. “I remember you telling me that weeks ago, but I didn’t think to ask at the time. Was it a usual cycle?”

This time, she was momentarily speechless. Panic knotted around her heart again. He saw the answer in her wide, glassy eyes.

“It was lighter and much shorter than usual,” he said for her.

She nodded mutely, wondering how he knew that, wondering if he was somehow doing what the alethiometer could do (see the truth).

He was still talking to her like her doctor and not like her lover. “That can happen very early on. Spotting is quite common in the first trimester. In fact, one cause is implantation spotting. When the fertilized egg implants into the uterus it can cause spotting that seems sort of like a light cycle, and it will often happen around the same time a woman’s cycle usually comes, so it can be confusing—”

“Stop,” she heard herself say suddenly. She held up a hand. She was surprised to find her fingers quivering. “Stop talking to me like that.”

He obediently closed his lips. He didn’t ask her to clarify because he didn’t need to. They both knew what she was talking about and they both felt the strange, cold detachment.

“I don’t know how else to talk,” he finally said, encouraged to speak by Kirjava’s accusatory glare. “This is the only side of this I know.”

Her eyes burned, hot and painful. She blinked hard against it. For a moment, as she sat there, the weight of a world she hadn’t even fully processed settling on her shoulders, she wondered if this was how her mother had felt over twenty-four years ago.

“Talk to me like Will. Like my lover. Not like…like…like you’re just my doctor and this has nothing to do with you, because it _does_ , because this—because you—and _me_ —and _we_ …” she was finding it difficult to inhale fully. Her chest felt tight. She didn’t know what was happening. “Because I’m frightened and lost and you’re supposed to—you always—” she couldn’t get a complete thought out. She was beginning to genuinely panic. The feeling crept up on her and took over before she realized what was happening. And as she struggled to catch her breath and process what was almost certainly happening, she felt Kirjava brush against her. A moment later, she felt the surprisingly heavy weight of her paws as she stepped onto her. And when Will’s dæmon curled up over Lyra’s stomach, Lyra felt something inside her burst open, and she wept.

He gathered her into his broad arms and tucked her close to his heart, Kirjava wedged between them, Pan curled around her throat, and she knew somewhere in a rational part of her mind that she was overreacting preemptively, but she couldn’t talk any sense into herself. Her moods had been like that lately: volatile and senseless.

“We don’t know for sure,” he tried to reassure her, but Lyra felt certain that they did, and she knew he did, too. “I’ll go and get a test—”

For a moment, she considered slapping him. She leaned back from him and looked up at his face with a fearsome glare, her cheeks tearstained and flushed.

“You won’t go anywhere! You’re not going _anywhere_! Do you understand?!”

His eyebrows rose in surprise. His expression softened a second later as she began crying again. He pulled her back into his arms.

“Okay, I won’t go,” he said. “Not until I have to.”

She only cried harder at those words, because he _would_ have to, wouldn’t he? The full reality of the situation settled on her bones. He would have to go back. He would always have to go back. Because he wasn’t really here. And at any moment, he might lose his ability to see her. At any moment, she might find herself stranded here without him again, she might find herself and their _child_ stranded in a different world from him, just as his own father had done to his mother and to him…oh, it was so horrible, and Lyra felt so worried and so heartbroken that she could hardly breathe through her weeping.

And all the while he held her, and Kirjava kept up her steady purring against Lyra’s stomach, and Pan nuzzled her neck, and gradually, bit by bit, Lyra felt herself calming down.

If it were true, she would have to figure it out. She would have to work harder again—she would have to find that door before the baby came. She would have to fight hard now to make sure that she and her child would never be separated from Will the way his father had been separated from him.

And if it wasn’t true, she would still have to work harder to find the door, because one day it _might_ be true. Despite how frightened she felt now, she knew that she very much wanted it to be true _one day_.

She had been stupid to ever think that this strange traveling was enough. It would never be enough. Not until he was solidly with her; not until she could wrap her thin arms around his physical body and refuse to let go—kicking and screaming and biting, _never never never_ —should anybody try to pull him away.

And as she lay there in his arms, exhausted from her weeping, it came to her again: clarity. She hadn’t been able to make sense of the second part of the alethiometer’s answer because she hadn’t known the things she needed to know then to understand. Camel, anchor, angel, apple, baby, tree. They did build upon each other. The camel was a long, arduous journey taken with special cargo, and it was connected to the elephant because she would be making that journey to Africa. The anchor and the angel were closely intertwined: the anchor was the physical realities, the angel was the type of traveling Will was using, and both represented the purpose (and cause) behind her journey. The apple was what it always was for her: temptation. Temptation she had succumbed happily to; temptation that had possibly changed the course of her life forever. Temptation that had caused…

The baby— _the baby_. She thought it was probably like the elephant: there was no need to try and think deeper about it. The tree…her mind still stumbled at the tree. She didn’t know. She was tired and she didn’t know. But she knew enough. She knew what was ahead of her.

She sat up and wiped away her tears. She leaned across Will and pulled her alethiometer from the bedside table. She sniffed against her runny nose, tucked her hair behind her ears, and took a deep breath. She formed her question easily: baby, Madonna, wild man. The answer was calm and immediate: _yes_. She almost felt as if the alethiometer were reassuring her. She took another shuddering breath and took a moment to compose herself. She retucked the hair that’d slipped from behind her ears. And then she asked something different. _Globe, baby, cornucopia._ Again, a simple answer: _yes_.

Will must have felt the way her body relaxed slightly beneath his arm. “What?” he asked urgently.

She asked another question. _Wild man, anchor, Madonna._

Once more: _yes._

There was some clumsy fumbling at the dials for her next question. She wasn’t quite sure how to ask it. _Baby, marionette, cauldron_. The hand spun around quickly and rapidly, landing on a confusing combination of symbols, and Lyra assumed she’d asked the question wrong. She let that one go for now. She had answers to the three most important ones: _am I pregnant? Will the baby be healthy and normal despite the fact that Will is traveling between worlds? Am I going to find Will—are we going to stay together?_

She clutched the alethiometer to her chest and curled back up to Will’s side. His fingers sought refuge in her hair; she closed her eyes as he stroked his fingers through it.

“What did you ask it?” he asked again.

“I asked it if I was pregnant.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Maybe he expected her to give the answer up, but she didn’t, so he asked: “Well?”

“Yes,” she breathed. It was better confirmation in her mind than any sort of medical test.

She felt him take a deep, shaky breath. “Okay. Lyra, we’ve got to get you to a doctor and have them run tests; I can’t bring the machinery with me that we’d need and I have no idea if—if—I mean, am I really _here_?”

She knew what he was really asking. “I already asked if the baby would be normal and healthy. The alethiometer said yes. And I asked one more thing, too. If I would find you, if we would be together like a family, and it said yes to that, too.”

She didn’t know if he trusted the alethiometer as whole-heartedly as she did, but he did trust her. At that assurance, he tightened his hold on her and whispered something Lyra couldn’t decipher. She wondered if maybe he was crying—his breaths sounded different—but she couldn’t check without leaning back to look at his face, and she didn’t want to let go of him long enough to do so. Their dæmons were freely intertwined with them both in a way they had never been before; Pan might touch Will sometimes, and Kirjava might touch Lyra, but they were rarely all tangled up together like one unit. Were someone to walk in now, they wouldn’t be able to tell whose dæmon was the cat and whose was the pine marten, as both were currently curled up with both humans as if both belonged to each of them and each of them belonged to both.

Now that she had sobbed through her panic and had her worst fears dismissed by her alethiometer—who couldn’t lie—she was feeling less devastated by the entire situation. Her mind was starting to process it. A baby. She had a baby inside her—or what would eventually _be_ a baby, at any rate. Will’s. Her and Will’s. _Theirs_. And now that she knew that she _would_ find Will, that they wouldn’t be kept apart, she wasn’t worried at all: he would be a magnificent father, and she believed in that now as wholeheartedly as she always had. And she hoped so terribly that she would be a wonderful mother. She didn’t have much to go on: she had never had an example of a good mother growing up. The closest thing to motherly affection she’d ever felt had been during those weeks in that cave when her mother was drugging her to keep her asleep and imprisoned. She had never been cuddled, or rocked to sleep, or comforted in the middle of the night, or kissed when she fell down. Where would she start? How would she know what to do? Did you have to be taught how to be a mum by your own mum or was it instinctual?

She felt a bit sorry for herself, and because her emotions were so wild lately—and she knew why now—she let herself wallow in it for a few minutes. She let herself mourn what she’d never had, but only with the silent promise to herself that she would never let her and Will’s child mourn the same thing. She may not have had a decent enough mum to learn from, but there _were_ people she could talk to who could teach her all about being a good mother: Ma Costa, Serafina. With a rush of joy, she realized that one day she could even talk to Will’s mum.

She leaned back and looked up at Will, at his strong and handsome features, at the face she already knew better than her own, and mustered the courage to give him a small smile. At just that one smile, his entire expression changed: his brow evened out, the tension disappeared from his eyes, his own lips curved up into a hesitant smile. It brightened his entire expression.

“It’s going to be okay,” she found herself whispering to him, as if _he_ had been the one to fall apart. “‘Cause I’m going to find you—the alethiometer said so—and we’re going to be together, and when we’re together, nothing can stop us. If we’re together, I’m not frightened of anything.”

He took her face gently in his large hands and she had never felt smaller or more delicate. For once, it didn’t bother her. She let him kiss her like she was something fragile and irreplaceable, like she was something to be worshiped.

“That’s what matters the most,” he agreed. “That we’re together. Lyra, I couldn’t live with myself if I abandoned you and our… _child_. If I did what my dad did. I couldn’t bear it…”

Her eyelids had fluttered shut as he kissed her lips again, but she opened them to look at him afterwards. He looked deeply agonized.

“That’s not going to happen. The alethiometer said so. The last parts make sense now…they didn’t before ‘cause I didn’t know what I know now. I thought the baby was symbolic, but the baby isn’t symbolic. The baby’s just that: a baby. Our baby. And I have to make this journey to our door to find you, and the alethiometer says it’s going to be arduous and difficult, but it also told me that I’m _going to find you_. And I _am,_ Will.”

There was more to it. The tree, and by extension, questions she had about the witch’s prophecy and whether this child played into it in any way. But she didn’t need to bring that up to him now.

Will tightened his hold on her face and gazed seriously into her eyes. Lyra looked back just as steadily.

“If this isn’t what you want—if you want to end this pregnancy now and wait until we’re older and our future is more certain—I will do whatever I have to do to take care of that. I’ll do whatever it is that you need. I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have a choice in all this because this is my fault and I never meant to do this to you. I don’t want you to feel forced into this, or frightened, or suffocated…Lyra, I always wanted to have a family with you, but I don’t want a family if _you don’t_. I don’t want you to put your life in jeopardy in any way unless it’s your own decision.”

She didn’t fully understand because there were no medical ways to end a pregnancy in her world (that she knew of.) The witches had a way, but that’s all she knew of, and she didn’t imagine Will could perform spells like they could. But she understood and respected (and loved) Will’s reasons for the offer. She respected and loved how much he respected and loved _her_. And so she took his offer seriously.

“I’m going to ask my alethiometer,” she told him. It was the most logical way she knew to handle a problem as complex and confusing as this one.

Already knowing deep down what it would say, she sat up, crossed her legs, and tucked her hair behind her ears before turning and twisting the dials to the correct symbols. Kirjava moved to curl up in her lap now that Lyra was no longer supine. It was beginning to feel as normal as Pan being there, and Lyra wondered if any human other than her had _ever_ felt so close to a person as she felt to Will.

 _Hourglass, baby, moon_.

She sat still and trancelike, her eyes traveling around the alethiometer, taking note of every symbol it landed on in response. _Baby, sun, tree, anchor, cornucopia._ And then again. And again. And again. She felt tenderness coming from the alethiometer, and she didn’t know if she had ever felt that before, and it both frightened and invigorated her. She felt again that the alethiometer was comforting her, that it was making it known that it understood her question and didn’t resent her for it, but that there was more to this than she could possibly know or understand right now.

“No,” Lyra whispered, falling out of her trance. She didn’t realize she was quivering until Will wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and folded her into his embrace. She hid her face into his chest and struggled to explain what she had seen when the meanings were only hazily at the edges of her own mind in the first place. “Our baby is important. I don’t know…I didn’t understand…I can’t see _how_ , but I know that it is, because they used sun for _life_ , followed right after by tree—I keep seeing this symbol in connection with all of this and I think it’s representing new life or growth—and then an anchor and a cornucopia, meaning together that the baby is going to secure prosperity of some sort, only it didn’t tell me how and it didn’t want me to know yet…it was being kind, Will, but it was also telling me _no, you can’t know that yet_ , I just know that it was…but I don’t think it means anything bad for the baby, ‘cause the alethiometer already told me our baby would be healthy…but I’m going to ask in a different way to make sure…”

She was painfully aware of the ways in which children ended up being used for cosmic purposes, and she wasn’t sure she was willing to bring a child into the world just to be used like that. So she clarified and asked the alethiometer whether her baby would live a good long life and be happy and healthy, and the answer she received was long and confusing, but Lyra understood the gist: she was being scolded.

She lowered the alethiometer and flushed in shame. Pantalaimon left Will’s shoulders and moved over to nudge the alethiometer curiously with his nose.

“What did it say?” Pan asked.

“It’s angry with me,” Lyra admitted, somewhat embarrassed. “It said it’s not a fair question to ask…that no parent should get to know their child’s fate before their child is even alive…it was very cross with me for asking.”

Pantalaimon pushed his way into her lap. It seemed to be a silent signal to Kirjava to leave it. Lyra cradled Pantalaimon to her as he crawled up into her arms.

“It’s right, though, Lyra,” Pan told her softly. “Would anybody have a baby if they knew ahead of time what would happen?”

“The people whose babies are going to be happy and healthy, yes,” Lyra argued. She was worried and it amazed her that she was. How could she worry about something that didn’t even exist yet?

“But everybody suffers,” Pantalaimon said, and Will murmured a quiet agreement. “Nobody in any world can have a baby with the assurance that the baby will never suffer. Think about us…do you think we would exist if Mrs. Coulter had been able to see what your life would look like? The things you would do?”

She didn’t know. She had never known her mother’s heart enough to know what she would or wouldn’t do.

“Or me,” Will said softly. “Do you think my parents would have had me had they known what my childhood would look like?”

“I hope that they would,” said Lyra, but she wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know if I would have if I were them,” Will admitted. He shook his head and lifted Kirjava into his arms. “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

Try telling that to a girl who’d dedicated the past _decade_ to learning her way around a truth-telling device. To a girl who lied more than she did anything else but also valued the truth in a deep way she couldn’t articulate to anybody, not even Pan. To her, it was always better to know. Only she couldn’t know about this. The alethiometer was not going to tell her: that much was certain. It had already told her what she ought to do in the detached, guileless way it often did.  It was up to her now whether or not she was going to listen to it.

So she looked at Will and asked his opinion. “What do you want us to do?”

He didn’t dismiss her question or give her a hasty answer. He met her gaze, his eyes wild and fierce with emotion, and thought carefully.

“I know what I want,” he finally said, his voice soft. He reached up and brushed her hair from her eyes. “But I won’t tell you until you know what you want.”

At first she was angry with him. She argued and debated her side and glared at him. Then she pleaded. _Tell me what to do,_ she said, _because I don’t know and I’m scared to make the wrong choice._ But he refused, telling her that he didn’t want what he wanted to influence what _she wanted_ and that he promised he would be honest with her after she had already figured it out for herself. Finally, after nearly a half-hour had passed and they had reached an impasse, she was forced to think it through without any more input from him than “whatever you want, I’ll be at your side.”

And when she finally thought about it, she found she didn’t think much about what the alethiometer had said about the child’s importance. Granted, she thought quite a lot about its first assurances—that it would be a normal, healthy baby, that she and Will would find each other—but when she thought about having the baby, it wasn’t because she thought it had some great destiny ahead of it. Instead, her mind imagined soft things she herself had never seen or experienced before: Will holding a tiny, sleepy baby on his chest, her singing and rocking it to sleep, its tiny hand closed around her thumb, the six of them together: Lyra, Pan, Will, Kirjava, their baby and their baby’s dæmon. A family. A family that was built upon _love_ , not a desire for power, not attraction that bordered on violence, not selfish manipulation. A real _family_. She had never had one of those before. But she could have one now, with Will. They could build their own heaven _together_. And when they died, they would have so many wonderful stories to tell the harpies about their life together (their life with their child.) What could be better than that?

She didn’t know why she felt so moved. Nothing had really changed—not yet. But her eyes burned with tears as she whispered: “I want to do this.”

He held her as he admitted: “I do, too.”

She knew the truth when she heard it.

* * *

 

Will was in an impenetrable haze.

He made it halfway through his shift before Gwen pulled him aside and inquired whether or not he was okay. He could tell she was worried, and he wanted to reassure her, but he had the hardest time focusing on her question.

“Have you passed out again recently?” she asked, clearly assuming Will’s distraction was due to medical reasons. She wasn’t altogether wrong; it just wasn’t _his_ medical condition that his mind was obsessing over.

“No, I’m fine,” he told her. It was a lie. He had been away from Lyra for two days now and the absence was getting unbearable. He was so worried, and he just wanted to be back there with her, to check in on her, to make sure she was okay. Their separation had never been this hard. “I’ve just got a lot going on right now. Personal things.”

The older woman gave him a knowing look. She relaxed at once as if she understood. “Trouble with a woman?”

Well, in a way. “Yeah.”

She glanced over her shoulder as they heard someone begin to scream from behind an examining curtain. They needed to get back to their jobs. “If you want to talk about it, I give great advice.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

During his lunch break, he went to a pharmacy and picked up a pregnancy test, vitamin D supplements, and folic acid supplements. He paid for them, shoved those down into his coat pocket, and then made his way to Mary’s to visit his mum. She had rang that morning and asked him to come over for lunch, and even though he had absolutely no appetite, he couldn’t tell her no.

She hugged him tighter than usual upon his arrival, held his face in her hands, and said: “What’s wrong?”

Will looked away from her. “Nothing. I’m just tired and work’s been very stressful.”

She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t push him, either. What would he have said _? I’m worried beyond belief because my lover—my love—is probably pregnant and in order for us to be together, she’s going to have to make a dangerous journey on her own? I’m worried that I’ll end up doing exactly what Father did—leaving the woman I love to raise our child alone? I’m heartbroken because I can only see her three days a week, and even then, I have to leave every few hours to come back here, because it’s not really me and I’m not really there? I feel horrible because I want to be there for her more than anything but I can’t be?_

He hardly touched his lunch, though he made every effort to. He listened to his mum talk enthusiastically about her book club and tried to respond appropriately, but his thoughts were somewhere else. Before he went back to work, his mum touched his shoulder, stopping him in the doorway.

“William.”

He turned and looked down at her reluctantly. She held his gaze, her eyes concerned and worried.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

He swallowed hard. He wanted to tell her everything, and he knew he would have to soon, but he didn’t have enough answers yet to tell her anything. She would have so many questions. He would have to know how to answer them when they came.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said instead. That much was true at least: she didn’t need to worry about anything. “It’s a good thing, Mum, really. I’m just trying to sort it all out in my head.”

She considered that. “Does it have to do with the girl?”

Will froze. He had turned around to leave again, but at that, he faced her. “What?” he asked in disbelief.

His mum smiled. “Mary told me you found a way to see her again. The girl you met when you were gone all those years ago, when you lost your fingers. Lyra. Why didn’t you tell me you found her again, Will?”

His first reaction was anger towards Mary. He had not told her to tell his mum a thing. He didn’t want her worrying about him, worrying that he might disappear off into another world like his father had, and how _dare she_ tell his mum anything without asking…!

But his mum didn’t look worried or stressed. She was still smiling up at Will and waiting. Will took a deep breath and worked through his irritation.

“I just didn’t want to jinx it, Mum. I only told Mary because…well, she understands this stuff. Different worlds and all that. I didn’t want you to fret.”

His mum had openly admitted the first time Will had ‘come clean’ to her that she found it all difficult to believe, though she told him she would try for him.

“I don’t particularly like that you’re going off into different worlds, Will, but Mary said it was safe, and I trust her, and I trust you. I knew something had changed. You’ve been so much happier lately, more alive than I’ve seen you in a long while. Is it because of her? Do you love her?”

“Yes,” he said, answering both questions. He reached out and held onto the door frame. He looked at the wood beneath his hand and considered telling her the truth.

“Are you going to ask her to marry you?” guessed his mum. “Is that what has you so distracted? When can I meet her?”

“I don’t know. We’re trying to find another door between our worlds,” he said. He smiled suddenly, a memory filling his chest with warmth. “But she says the first thing she wants to do once she comes here is meet you, Mum.”

His mum smiled brightly. “And I want to meet her! She must be something special to make you so happy.”

“She is.” His heart was thundering in his ears. His pulse seemed to know that he was going to tell her before he did. “We think she might be pregnant.”

Anybody else would have thought he was insane. They would have thought he was hallucinating this made-up girlfriend and now he was taking his delusions to the next level. But his mum knew him, and she knew what it felt like to have people doubt your sanity, so she didn’t show any indication that she thought he was mad. She did look shocked, though.

“Oh!” she said.

“Yeah.”

“But…”

“I don’t really know,” he said, answering the question she’d been too hesitant to ask. “What I’ve been doing…it’s sort of like…teleportation.” It wasn’t really, but it was the easiest way for him to explain it to her without confusing her more. “So I’m there even though I haven’t really…gone anywhere. I’ve got a body, I mean, when I’m there with her.”

She turned and leaned back against the wall beside the door. She looked blankly towards the window as she thought about what he’d said. Will grew concerned. Maybe he shouldn’t have said a thing. She had just been doing so well lately that he thought maybe once he could lean on her and it wouldn’t be too much, but maybe he’d been wrong.

“Mum? I’m sorry, forget I said anything,” he begged. He didn’t want to be the reason she backtracked after all the progress she’d made. He could never forgive himself for that.

“I certainly won’t,” she scoffed suddenly. She straightened and looked back at Will, all traces of shock gone and replaced with warm, maternal surety. It warmed Will to his bones. And when she reached out and pulled him into a hug, he felt like a child again. “Will, how do you feel about this? Is this what you want? Can you see yourself having a family with this girl?”

“Yes,” he answered. It was an easy question. “I love her so much, Mum, and she loves me, and there is nobody else I’d rather have a child with—nobody. But I’m frightened.”

“Well, it’s a scary thing,” she agreed.

“I’m so scared that I’ll let her down, that I won’t be able to be there for her like she needs me to be, that we won’t find that door and that…well, that…” _that she’ll have to raise the child alone like you had to do with me._

“How can I help?” his mother asked at once. She turned and began walking over to the table near the door. Will watched in confusion as she pulled her purse out. “I’ve paid off my credit card, take it, we can use it to get plane tickets and go wherever we need to go, wherever this door is.”

 _We._ Will’s heart doubled in size. He wished it were that simple. He wished money were the only hurdle. He gently refused to take the credit card as she pushed it towards him.

“I’ve got plenty of money, Mum. It’s not that. We don’t know _where_ the door is. As soon as we do, I’ll go there, and she’ll come here, and you’ll get to meet her...” _and maybe your grandchild, too_. “It’s going to take time. Lyra’s a scholar and she’s working it all out…she’s trying to figure out where it is. But until she does, there’s not much we can do.”

His mum looked disappointed. She turned and tucked her credit card back into her purse.

“You’re a good man, Will,” she told him. He didn’t really understand why she’d said it, but it meant a lot to hear regardless. “I’m proud of you. Some men…they run when things like this happen.”

That had never been his nature and they both knew it. There was no need to say it aloud.

“A scholar?” his mum asked suddenly, her voice full of interest. “What sort of scholar? What does she look like?”

Will was beyond pleased to have a photo to show his mum. He pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his photos, choosing one he’d taken of Lyra beneath a tree in the Library Gardens at Jordan. He passed the phone to his mum. He watched as her face glowed with a smile.

“Oh, she’s _beautiful_ ,” she said approvingly. She passed the phone back to Will. And he knew his mum didn’t think he was mad, but he scrolled through to one of him and Lyra together just to prove this was real. He passed his phone back. Her smile was huge now. She studied the photo for what felt like a long time.

“Is that a…ferret? Or…” she seemed to understand. “She’s got a Kirjava.”

He and Mary had explained the concepts of dæmons to his mum after he returned, but it was the hardest thing for her to understand, and she still didn’t seem to really _get it._ Kirjava had never spoken around his mum before, both him and her fearing it would confuse his mum too much. He remembered how baffled he’d been the first time he’d seen Pantalaimon, and when they’d returned back to his world, his mum had been extremely unstable. She had seemed comfortable accepting that Kirjava was something much more important and unique than a pet, but had never used the word _dæmon_ after that one conversation they’d had. But Will realized now that she’d somewhat grasped the concept after all. She seemed to intuitively realize that whatever Kirjava was, Pan was the same.

“Yeah. Only hers is called Pantalaimon. He’s a pine marten.”

“Pantalaimon,” his mum repeated, trying the name out. “Strange name, but it suits them.”

 _Them_. He smiled. She understood more of this than she realized. “Yes, I think so, too.”

She handed the phone back to him again. “How does she feel about all this?”

“She’s frightened, too, but she’s trying to hide it.”

“She’s brave,” his mum realized. She seemed to like having a trait to tie to the image of the girl she was forming in her mind.

“The bravest,” Will said, and then the words kept coming. “And clever, and quick-witted, and funny, and warm, and kind, and loyal. Fierce and unabashed. Stubborn.”

His mum laughed. He hadn’t expected that reaction.

“What?” he wondered.

Her smile was soft. “Nothing,” she said. She reached up and patted his cheek. “Just sounds like a very good match for you.”

She _was_ , and before he knew it, Will was back in the house on the sofa telling his mum all about Lyra. He told her stories from when they were younger that she had already heard, but this time, he thought she believed them just a bit more now that she’d seen a photo of Lyra. He told her newer stories from their recent time together. He told her how Lyra made him feel, how he was terribly excited to have a family with her deep down beneath his worry, how he’d felt as if they were destined for each other. And his mum listened intently, offering her opinion and advice, smiling when Will smiled and frowning when he frowned. When she looked him straight in the eye and said: “Will, you two are going to be brilliant parents,” he felt as if a thousand worries had been lifted from his shoulders.

Later that night, when he returned to his flat after work, he saw his mother had brought dinner by for him. Beside the still-hot dish, she’d set a letter. The ivory envelope was already sealed, and on the back, in his mum’s neat cursive, she’d written: _Lyra_.

His heart thudding, Will set it in the middle of the table where he’d see it every day so he wouldn’t forget to take it with him when he returned to Lyra on Thursday. He desperately wanted to open it, but he had too much respect for both women to do so. So he sat at his table with Kirjava in his lap and stared at the letter as he ate his dinner.

* * *

 

Lyra was standing outside a multistory stone building weighing her options.

She needed to get inside, but she wasn’t sure the best way to do that yet. If she approached as herself, she would either be turned away at once or led to a strategic part of the ‘orphanage’ where somebody would sit her down in a dingy armchair and spew propaganda at her for ages. Even the idea made her yawn from boredom. No—she would lie her way in. At least then it’d be interesting.

“I’m going to pretend I’m a lady who’s lost her kid,” Lyra told Pantalaimon. “Here, help me make my hair look messier…”

Pantalaimon crawled up to her shoulders and began tossing her hair wildly with his paws, tangling it as best he could. While he did that, she undid the waist tie on her dress, causing the billowy material to swallow her up as if it were far too big for her. She took off the two rings she wore and stuffed them down into her boot. As a final touch, she purposely walked into a muddy puddle at the edge of a nearby flowerbed, dirtying her boots.

Confident she no longer looked like an aristocrat—and that most the women working in this orphanage were lower class women who wouldn’t recognize her—she lifted Pan up into her arms and approached the front door. She knocked hard twice and then stepped back to wait. As soon as she heard approaching footsteps, she adjusted her expression into something anxious.

The door opened. A woman close to Lyra’s own age stood in front of her in a canvas dress, a terrier dæmon at her ankles. “Yes?”

Lyra clasped her hands in front of herself. “Please, miss, I’m wondering if you’ve seen my son. I had to leave town to do some work and I left him with my neighbor, only when I returned, he weren’t anywhere to be found. I en’t seen him since I left and I looked everywhere, I did. Then I heard from some that you was nice people here and you was taking in lost kids so I come to see if you have my little boy. His name’s Lee and he’s a handsome fellow, he is. His dæmon likes to be a mouse.”

The woman was suspicious. “We en’t got no Lee.”

She went to close the door. Lyra shot her hand out and caught it with her palm before she could.

“Please, he sometimes goes by other names…it’s a little game we play, see. Can I please come in and look for meself? Please? I’m good at cooking and cleaning: I’ll help out for a couple hours in exchange. I only want to see if my boy’s there. _Please_.” She flooded her voice with so much sorrow and longing that the woman’s suspicion eased. She opened the door wider.

“Well,” she said finally. “I guess you can look around. But you’ll be peeling potatoes later in payment.”

“Sure, I do that all the time,” said Lyra, when in fact she had never peeled a potato in her entire life.

She pushed into the orphanage without any further invitation. She immediately set off up the staircase to the right of the front hall. The wooden floors were so old that every step Lyra took creaked. She heard the woman hurry after her, but she paid her no mind.

“Keep your eyes open for the Richardson child,” Lyra breathed to Pantalaimon. “I’ll look for any suspicious rooms that are locked.”

Lyra made quite a fuss of calling sadly for ‘Lee’ every few moments. She peeked into each bedroom and scanned her eyes over each child’s face, but of course none of them were hers. She thought that maybe the rumors had been wrong—that this wasn’t a Church establishment masquerading as an orphanage—until she saw the locked door at the end of the hall. It had a sign on it that read _RESTRICTED_.

“You can’t go in there,” the woman said when Lyra reached for the door handle. Her voice went up a few octaves in her panic. Pantalaimon had gone closer to try and get a better look, but the woman’s terrier dæmon darted in front of him and cut him off, snarling softly as he did.

“But what if my Lee snuck in there?” Lyra tried innocently. “I’d like a little peek, just in case, just so I know.”

The woman was staring hard at her. “What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.

Pantalaimon was back at Lyra’s feet now as if he sensed danger. Lyra answered casually enough.

“Lizzie Parry. I work in the kitchens at St Michael’s.”

“And how old you say your boy was?” asked the woman.

Lyra could tell there was a reason she was asking this. Her mind worked through every possibility quickly before she answered.

“I dunno, I had him really young…he must be getting close to settling-age, I’d say.”

The woman’s entire demeanor changed. She stiffened. Her face went pallid. She reached out and grabbed Lyra’s arm tightly, pulling her away from the door.

“You have to go,” she ordered.

Lyra yanked her arm out of the woman’s touch. “I don’t! Why’re you acting like that?! What’s in this room?”

“There’s nothing in there but tools that might be dangerous for children, that’s all, and you need to get out of here _right now_!”

She was trying again to pull Lyra, but Lyra stubbornly locked her legs in place and resisted. As she tugged and Lyra pulled back, she felt a sudden wave of nausea overcome her. It weakened her enough for the woman to get the upper hand; she began dragging Lyra down the hallway, her hands tight around Lyra’s biceps in a vice grip. Lyra was just trying not to pass out or vomit. She had been up all night sick and had thought the worst was behind her, but she had obviously thought wrong.

Pantalaimon came to her rescue. He jumped bravely on the terrier’s back and began snarling and biting at the nape of his neck; the terrier reared around and tried to bite at Pan but couldn’t reach him; the woman let go of Lyra in her shock, allowing Lyra to race back over to the locked door. She didn’t think twice about it as she yanked her boot off and turned it around so the wooden heel was facing out. She slammed the heel of the shoe into the cheap-looking door handle as hard as she possibly could. She did it again, and again, and again, hitting so hard now that she was crying out from the exertion, and she didn’t know if she was feeling dizzy from how hard she was swinging the boot or if it was her nausea, but by the time the door handle was forced down despite its lock and the door creaked open, she could hardly stay upright. And all the while, Pan and the terrier were snarling and fighting, and the woman was trying halfheartedly to get her terrier to run from the fight so they could get help, but it didn’t sound as if the terrier could even hear her.

Lyra wasn’t bound to Pantalaimon the way the woman was bound to her dæmon, so she was able to squeeze into the now-opened room and leave the dæmons in the corridor. However, she was finding it difficult to stay upright. 

“Not now, not now, _not now_!” Lyra scolded her body. She stumbled, sick and disoriented, into the pitch-black room. She fumbled along the wall for a light switch. She felt like she was sideways as she took a step. Her stomach rolled and flipped. She had to double over at the waist and press her palms to her thighs as she breathed through the feeling. Her head was spinning—she was seconds away from vomiting—she could hear a weird humming in her ears—

The lights flickered on. She heard the distant sound of Pantalaimon’s paws hitting the floor. He must have jumped up to get the lights.

“Come on, come on,” he hissed at her urgently. “Get a good look. She’s got help running up as we speak…are you okay?”

“No,” admitted Lyra, but that didn’t change the fact that she was here and she had to do what she set out to do.

She forced herself back upright and took fast, shallow breaths of dusty air. She took in the chaos in front of her: tons of mismatched pieces of technology, some familiar (like ordinators) and some unfamiliar. There were cages, too, in a variety of sizes, though all were empty and looked as if they hadn’t been used in ages. There were boxes and boxes of files stacked from floor to ceiling, at least thirty stacks or more, and some medical equipment that looked familiar, and tucked near the back, inaccessible due to the boxes, the glint of a terrifyingly familiar silver blade…

She had to shut her eyes again, but it didn’t matter: she knew what she was looking at. This was largely stuff salvaged from the General Oblation Board’s warehouses. And her tip had been correct in at least one way. The Church was involved here and they seemed to be angling to continue the General Oblation Board’s research.

Lyra was too sick and weak to run. When at least three women stormed into the room, she couldn’t do much but kick, scratch, and hit them weakly.

“You’re evil! You’re awful! You know what they did and you’re letting them try to do it all again anyway! You didn’t see it—I did! You have no idea how horrible it was, how _evil_!” Lyra raged. “Let them cut your dæmons away and see how you like it! Let them! I hope they do! I _hope they do! You’re_ _vile_!”

She was dragged kicking and yelling down the stairs and brought to a room near the front hall. They shoved her roughly into a chair. She could feel bruises forming all over her arms already, though it was her nausea that was really weakening her. She didn’t even try to get up from the chair; she just hung her head and breathed shallowly through her chapped, parted lips. Pantalaimon was nervously nudging her cheek with his nose, concerned.

“Who sent you here?”

She answered them with her head still bowed and her stomach heaving. “I sent my own self here! My board received a tip about your orphanage and I came here to see for myself!”

“Your board?” challenged a woman. Her commanding voice made Lyra assume she was the one in charge.

“Yes! The Child Protection Board! A woman said you stole her niece from her—Flora Richardson—and took her here and she thought you were doing something evil! And—!” her furious words broke off with a soft groan of pain. She was nearly panting now as the nausea got worse and worse.

“We’re not doing anything evil. We let the Church store things here and run experiments in exchange for funding, but that is all,” snapped another woman.

“Experiments on the children here, you mean?” Lyra clarified. She mustered every ounce of her strength to look up at them and glower. And then—because she didn’t feel well enough to say all the swear words she wanted to—she spat on the floor right in front of them. Pantalaimon jumped down from her neck and curled himself over her middle as one of the women surged towards her angrily in response. He snarled viciously with a hair-raising, nasty sound that nearly shocked Lyra. The woman backed up at once.

There was a long silence. “You’re as quick-tongued as they say, Miss Belacqua. And you’re brave coming here alone.”

Lyra bristled with affront. “Are you _threatening me_?” she demanded.

“No, of course not. I’m merely commenting on the fact that most women in charge lead from the sidelines and send others to do their dirty work.”

She was extremely offended by the notion that these women thought they could be a threat to her (her! Lyra Silvertongue!), but at the same time, she was acutely aware of her weakened state (and what she was carrying). She stood up and tried to pretend her legs weren’t shaking. “This isn’t dirty work. This is important. And we’ll see how long you stay open once I tell the public what you’ve got stored away in that room.”

She set off unsteadily towards the door. She didn’t even look back to see how they would react. She heard Pantalaimon give a venomous snarl from his spot around her neck, but he must’ve convinced them not to follow after her because she exited the building without anybody laying a hand on her. Perhaps they were too afraid to once they realized who she was.

As soon as she’d cleared the front steps, she doubled over in the front garden and got sick all over the tulips. She stooped down and kneeled weakly beside the puddle of sick for a few minutes afterwards, struggling to catch her breath and recover, not feeling well enough to begin her walk back to Jordan College. When she finally felt able to stand, it was only the thought of what she had to look forward to later that got her feet moving across the pavement. Will would be there in a couple of hours, and no matter how horrible she felt now, things would be better then.

* * *

 

She was back in her sitting room writing a letter when she sensed Will’s arrival. She smiled as he leaned over her and kissed her freshly-washed hair.

“I’m almost done,” she greeted him.

“Take your time.” He sat down in the chair beside hers and reached for her free hand. She gave it to him gladly. He rubbed her fingers gently. “Where are those rings you always wear? The metal one and the one with all the gems?”

“Oh,” she remembered, pausing her writing. “My boot, I think.”

“Your _boot_?”

“Mmhmm. I hid them in there. I was pretending to be a servant girl,” she explained. She finished her letter and signed it. She felt Will’s eyes on her as she folded it up, stuck it into an envelope, and sealed it. She glanced over at him. “What?”

“Why were you pretending to be a servant?” he inquired.

She explained the tip they’d gotten about the orphanage, what she’d gone to look for, and what had ultimately happened. She left out the vomiting in the flower bed part, though.

“That’s _awful_ ,” Will said. He held Kirjava closer to him. “I can’t believe they would allow the Church to keep those things there. No telling what they’re doing to those kids.”

“I know,” Lyra said uneasily. She gestured at her letter. “I wrote to our political contact in the board. He’ll know what to do and who to tell.”

Now that she was done writing her letter, she turned to face him so she could hold him. But he caught her shoulders gently and stopped her before she could.

“Your _arms_ ,” he said, horrified. She looked down at them. She had purple bruises up and down her arms from where she’d been shoved, pulled, and dragged. “They did that? You didn’t say they hurt you.”

She had left out the mild violence. “Oh, yeah. They dragged me down the stairs. The bruises don’t really hurt.” She pressed her finger into a particularly dark one and hardly winced.

He looked unduly worried.

“I was being careful,” she defended, realizing why he probably looked like that. “Anyway, I felt too sick to cause too much trouble. I don’t think I’ll be going out investigating much of anything again for a while. I vomited outside of the building and everything.”

His frown deepened. “The sickness is getting worse?”

“Much worse,” she admitted, and only because Pantalaimon had returned to her side to give her a prompting nip. “Pan’s worried.” And she was too, a bit, but it was easier to say that Pan was.

Will looked like he wished he had good news to give her. “Morning sickness normally peaks in week nine. If you got pregnant that first time we were together…” he counted silently to himself for a moment… “you’d be around that point right now.”

Lyra furrowed her brow. “No,” she insisted. She counted off the weeks on her fingers. It was the twenty-ninth of June when they’d reunited. That was only around seven weeks ago. “We’ve only been reunited for seven weeks and there’s no _way_ it’s anybody’s baby but yours ‘cause I haven’t even kissed anybody else in ages—”

“No, sorry, I didn’t explain that well. The way we calculate pregnancy in my world is by…” he trailed off, clearly sensing her impatience. It must’ve shown on her face. He shortened his spiel. “We basically add two weeks onto it. We do it by cycles, not by conception date. So seven weeks would be close to nine.”

“I don’t think they do it like that here in my world,” Lyra said, citing the fact that her world seemed to be much more sensible about most things, and adding two weeks onto something seemed unnecessarily confusing.

“If I’m right, this should read positive; you’ll be well enough along for it to register,” he said. He’d sounded calm and confident while talking to her in his doctor voice, but as soon as he slid a slim cardboard box onto the table, he looked nervous again. Lyra reached out and pulled it over to her. It was a pregnancy test if she were to trust the writing on the box. She lifted it up and shook it curiously. In her opinion, the alethiometer was the best pregnancy test there was, but if Will wanted her to make sure with doctor tools from his world, she didn’t mind it. She opened the box and pulled out a long, flat stick of white plastic. It had what looked like a tiny window on the wider end. She wasn’t sure what she was meant to do with it. Put it under her tongue like a thermometer?

“What do I do with it?” she asked, puzzled. She turned it around in her hands and examined the backside as if it’d have instructions. It didn’t.

He pointed towards the back of her room, towards the bathroom. “Wee on it. This part here.” He leaned over and pointed at the narrower part. Lyra stared at him.

“Excuse me?” she asked, disgusted. She pushed it across the table. She spoke without thinking first. “I en’t doing that.”

“I’m serious, that’s how it works,” he countered calmly. Probably he had to convince women to do this all the time. Lyra felt so sorry for the women in his world. Nobody in her world would _ever_ make her wee on anything. “It measures the hCG in urine. That’s a hormone your body produces when you’re pregnant.”

She shook her head sadly. “That’s medieval, that is.”

He opened his lips to refute that, looking nearly as shocked by that comment as Lyra felt at being asked to piss on something, but then thought better of it.

“All right,” he gave in. He reached across the table and pulled the test back over to himself. He put it back in the box. Lyra noticed he looked a bit vexed, though he seemed determined not to show it. “Forget I asked.”

Lyra scrunched up her nose because she realized this was rather important to him. And so she was clearly going to do it. She couldn’t _believe_ she was going to, but she respected the fact that his world was different and that he needed things like this for this entire situation to feel _real_ , and she guessed she could wee on it as long as they never talked about it ever again.

She held her hand out and sighed heavily. “All right. I’ll wee on the stick. But we never talk about it ever again. Okay?”

He arched a thick eyebrow. “You’re sure? You won’t faint from embarrassment?”

“I think you’re being sarcastic so I’m going to ignore you,” she decided. She wiggled her fingers. “Give it here.”

He explained the instructions to her clearly and watched her as she walked off towards the bathroom.

“Pan!” Lyra called, pausing at the door to look over her shoulder. He was cuddled up beneath the table with Kirjava. She felt he should’ve been comforting her as she embarked on this weird, other-worldly task. He looked up at her, and as soon as he met her eyes, he understood. He leapt down the corridor and slipped into the bathroom with Lyra.

“You can count,” Lyra told Pantalaimon. “‘Cause it takes a couple minutes for it to work. Now you go sit there in the bathtub and wait for me…oh, I can’t _believe_ I’m doing this, his world is _odd_ , Pan…”

She followed the instructions, set it carefully into a glass cup she’d brought into the bathroom for that purpose, and then climbed into the empty bath to sit with Pantalaimon. She was glad he had come with her. He curled up in her arms and she hid her face into his fur. She could hear him whispering numbers under his breath as he counted. She focused on the sound of his heartbeats instead. It was such a familiar sound that it comforted her immensely so that by the time two minutes had elapsed, she felt quite content.

Of course she knew what it would say—the alethiometer had already told her—but she still felt her heart skip a beat at the little cross in the window. The cross meant she was pregnant, according to the instructions. Lyra found it ironic that it was a cross of all things. Pan pressed his nose up against the glass curiously and examined the symbol, too.

She did not want Will to see anything she’d pissed on, but she knew this entire activity would be moot if he didn’t see the results with his own eyes, so she gingerly carried the glass cup out of the bathroom and back to the small table in her sitting room. She set it down in front of him. Kirjava jumped onto the table at once and crouched beside the glass. Her tail swished along the tabletop as she studied the test. Will leaned forward and peered through the glass at the cross on the stick, nodded, and took a deep breath.

“Okay,” he said. He nodded his head. She could almost _see_ the situation fully sinking in: he appeared lost in thought. Kirjava scooted over on the tabletop and rubbed her body against his left hand, loud purrs falling from her mouth. Lyra leaned over the table and grabbed the glass awkwardly by its rim.

“Er…so do I throw this out now, or do we keep it, or…”

Before she could figure out what to do with the shameful device, the feet of Will’s chair screamed against the floor, and she felt him knock into her, his arms winding around her in a tight, fierce embrace. It was so unexpected that the glass slipped from her fingers. She watched in mute horror as it crashed to the floor, shattering into pieces around them and sending the stick spinning around and around on the floor. Will didn’t seem to care, and after a few seconds of feeling Will’s body against hers, Lyra felt her own humiliation melt away. Her body relaxed against Will’s. She held him close, as closely as he was holding her, and caught herself smiling into his shirt. Suddenly, the entire situation was sort of funny, and she didn’t know who started laughing first, but soon they were both laughing against each other, Lyra’s peals muffled into his shirt, Will’s into her hair. She thought nothing of the shattered glass blanketing the floor around her bare feet and went to step towards the sofa, but Will quickly lifted her up and set her on the table instead with a swiftness that surprised her.

“What?” she asked breathlessly. He leaned his body over hers and kissed her jaw in a way that made her thoughts scatter. Her eyelids drifted shut as he kissed down her throat. She’d forgotten her question entirely when he answered.

“You’ll cut your foot open again and it’s only just healed,” he explained. And then, as if the words had taken on a life of their own and burst from him, he pressed his face against her hair and murmured: “ _I love you, I love you.”_

She had never in her life felt as if somebody meant those words as whole-heartedly as Will did—especially not when they were directed at her. She was surprised by the intensity of it all. Didn’t he know that she knew that? But as he kissed her, she realized he was really saying more than just that, and that they were, in a way, talking about the baby without actually talking about it.

She was whispering the words back to him, her own voice saturated with love and joy and satisfaction, and she was so overcome with _love_ and _Will_ that she didn’t immediately register the sound of their dæmons’ urgent voices or even their claws as they nudged at their respective humans, trying to get their attention.

Finally, when Pantalaimon tugged quite rudely at her hair, she pulled her face back, momentarily ending her and Will’s kiss.

“ _What_?” she demanded, annoyed. “You two go off and do whatever it is you do and let us alone—oh.”

She realized what they’d been trying so hard to get her to notice: the sound of heavy knocks against her door. Kirjava jumped gracefully over the fallen glass and climbed up onto the windowsill beside the door. She peered out.

“Churchmen and another man. Elderly. He’s wearing a…cloak?”

Lyra scooted back and sat up. Will straightened. His jaw clenched.

“I’ll deal with them—”

Lyra reached out and caught his hand in hers. “No,” she said quickly, her mind on the things the priest had said the last time she’d relented to the Church’s constant nagging for a ‘meeting’. “No, Will, they can’t see you. You have to go hide. I’ll send them off, it won’t take long.”

He seemed fiercely protective and a bit senseless because of it. “I don’t care if they see me, they can’t just come here and harass you, this isn’t a church-state—you have rights and—”

“I care if they see you,” Lyra hissed. The knocking got louder and the Master called for her, his voice a bit strained. Lyra slipped off the table and stood in front of Will. She reached up and grabbed his face urgently. “Will, think about it. If they see you here again…what do you think they’re going to realize once I start showing? And they know you were involved in the war. They recognized your wound. Will, if they think you and I made a baby…when they already think I’m the second Eve to blame for Dust remaining and their rumors tell them that you’re the one to blame for the Authority’s death and the Church’s fall…what do you think they’re going to assume about our child? Our illegitimate child at that?”

She didn’t have to finish. His face paled slightly: he understood.

“Go to the bedroom,” Lyra urged. “They won’t go in there. Close the door. Go with him, Kirjava—”

“No,” Will and Kirjava said at the same time.

“I want her out here,” said Will.

Kirjava clearly had the same thought. Before he’d even spoken, she’d moved over to crouch unseen behind a long coat hanging on the coat rack near the door.

Lyra didn’t have time to argue. She walked carefully around the table, avoiding the glass, and headed towards the door.

“Wait!” Pan hissed. Lyra turned. Her heart jumped as she spotted the pregnancy test still lying on the floor. Pantalaimon scooped it up and shoved it underneath the closest bookshelf. Lyra took a moment to compose herself and then opened the door.

“Hello,” she greeted the Master. She cast her eyes coldly over the clergymen; the taller one had a vulture dæmon—she had never seen one of those before—and the shorter of the two had a fox. Pantalaimon returned to her side; she leaned down to pick him up so he could drape over her shoulders.

“Lyra,” the Master greeted apologetically. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb you. These…visitors…arrived and have been quite adamant about speaking with you. We were ordered to let them see you.”

“Ordered?” challenged Lyra. She arched an eyebrow. Her heart had squeezed a bit in panic. “The Church is able to make orders now?”

“Not the Church, no,” the Master said, but something in his tone told Lyra that was absolutely what was happening. “The police. The Church claims you broke into one of their orphanages?”

It was then that she noticed a policeman standing off to the side. He looked as unhappy to be there as Lyra felt. His dog dæmon refused to meet Pan’s eyes. She didn’t think this had been his decision at all, and that worried her.

“Oh, yeah. I did,” affirmed Lyra. There was no use lying this time. “And I saw what they were keeping in there, too.” She leaned past the doorframe and addressed the police. “Are you going to arrest me?”

His face flushed. “No, my lady, I only—”

“We should like to sit and talk,” one of the clergymen said firmly, interrupting the policeman. Then, to Lyra’s shock and offense, the clergyman brushed right past her and walked into her room without having been invited, his vulture dæmon swooping right in after him. The other clergyman looked a bit surprised but followed along after his partner. The Master’s face had purpled with rage. He met eyes with Lyra. _Just endure it,_ he seemed to be telling her. She nodded once, her lips twisted into a severe grimace. Pantalaimon jumped down from Lyra’s arms and went over to whisper with the Master’s raven dæmon; Lyra heard bits and pieces, enough to understand that the Master would be staying with her and that she needn’t worry.

“Is everything okay?” the taller of the clergymen inquired. Lyra closed the door behind herself and the Master and looked over at the clergyman. He was staring at the shattered glass on the floor.

“Perfectly so,” answered Lyra. “I was startled by your unexpected knocking. I dropped a glass.”

The Master turned to face the table beside Lyra’s door. He pressed the button. “A servant will see to it at once.”

Lyra led the clergymen over to the table she had just been lying on moments prior. She only had two chairs, so one of the clergymen had to stand. The Master and his dæmon went over to sit on her sofa.

“We are here to clarify what you saw.”

“Oh, I know what I saw,” said Lyra. “ _Especially_ that blade. I very nearly had it used on Pan and me when I was a child.”

“And if you remember correctly, that blade was buried in the back of that storage room and not, in any way, set up for use,” the other clergyman countered.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Lyra allowed. “Only why keep it at all unless you’re planning on using it again one day?”

“Because it is tied with years of valuable research. I’m sure you, a Scholar, understand the importance of research.”

“My research doesn’t involve murdering children, so no, not really,” she said coldly.

“And we’ll remind you, once again, that this was _your mother’s_ research,” the shorter of the two spat.

“And I don’t claim her and I don’t claim her research. Nor my father’s.”

“Funny. You seem to be her spitting image. And if what people say is true, your spirit is that of your father’s, too: vicious, unrelenting, and incapable of seeing any viewpoint but your own.”

She kept her expression neutral. “Well, I am their child.”

He observed her just as mildly. “My point exactly.”

She was calculating how to get the upper-hand in this conversation so they would leave and stop wasting her time with Will. As she did that, the men stared at her, long enough that she began to feel uncomfortable. Pantalaimon had noticed, too. He whispered _be careful_ in her ear, though she didn’t need to be told.

“We’ve traveled quite a long way,” the taller man said. “We’re terribly famished.”

As if they expected her to wait on them! She wasn’t a servant; she was an aristocrat. She bristled from their rudeness. “You’re welcome to help yourself to whatever you can find. I believe I have some chocolatl and some biscuits in that cabinet near the window.”

The shorter man exchanged a look with the taller one, and then they looked at the Master, who said: “I will call again for a servant. I’m not sure what’s taking them so long. They can bring some refreshments.”

“While we wait, we’ll have some whiskey,” one of the clergymen said. He was looking at the glass table near the sofa that held a crystal decanter given to Lyra as a graduation gift from one of her teachers. She absolutely _refused_ to serve them and, in fact, felt extremely furious at the mere idea that she should have to.

“Go on, then, if you must. You’ve already invited yourself into my space. Surely you must also drink my liquor.” She didn’t care how rude she was being. She had never found the social grace to be polite to clergymen after all they’d done to her throughout her life. The most rigorous of etiquette courses at St Sophia’s couldn’t break her of that. She could play society’s games with everybody but them.

The men looked just as angry that Lyra was refusing to serve them as Lyra felt. The taller man’s vulture dæmon was watching Pantalaimon with a look that made her shiver. Still—Lyra stubbornly met their irritated gazes and did not bow down. Finally, after a tense silence, the shorter of the men stood and stamped over towards the glass table. Lyra bit back a victorious grin as he poured his own drink, and then poured one for his partner, and then—to Lyra’s annoyance—one for her, too.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she told him as he set the heavy crystal glass down in front of her.

“Yes, but I think it might make you more pleasant to be around, so drink up.”

She stared him in the eyes as she shoved the glass away from her. Some alcohol sloshed over the sides and splashed the wooden table.

The man scowled in response. “You’re a rude, sinful woman. You’d do well to change your ways. You’d do well to respect us.”

“Not until you respect me first,” she shot back. She was aware how childish it probably sounded, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t give respect to anybody who didn’t deserve it.

The man was still scowling as he took a sip of his whiskey. His partner, however, was watching Lyra with a gaze that reminded her of the way his vulture dæmon had been looking at Pantalaimon.

“Perhaps,” he began, his eyes sparkling suddenly, his lips curving up into a mischievous grin, “there’s a reason she won’t partake with us. Our workers at the orphanage reported you weren’t feeling too well earlier today. You got sick in the bushes?”

Lyra didn’t react, but Pan whined lowly enough that only she could hear it.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re insinuating. If you mean I’ve no interest in drinking with men who force themselves into my home, you’re right. What exactly do you want from me?”

“We don’t want anything. We’ve merely come out of kindness to clear up any misunderstandings you and your… _board_ might have made based on what you saw today.”

“You mean you’ve come to threaten me so I won’t tell the public.”

“Nobody is threatening anybody,” the man with the fox dæmon said. “But it would be in your best interest to let this go. The Church would love to forget all about you, Lyra. We would love to put everything in the past. But you keep weaseling yourself into all our affairs.”

“Somebody ought to keep an eye on you. So I will. And it’s not as if you’re going to leave me alone regardless. You and I both know that.”

“Oh, but we could. If we didn’t feel like you were a threat, there wouldn’t be any reason to watch so closely over you. Why, as we speak our alethiometrist is uncovering some very…peculiar things about you. He wouldn’t need to if you would stop interjecting yourself into our doings.”

“I’ve met your alethiometrist. He couldn’t uncover a thing even if his alethiometer spoke to him and told him the truth outright. So if you think that’s going to intimidate me, you’re mistaken. The public listens to my board and there’s nothing you can do about that. You lost public favor when you started murdering people’s kids. You want to win it back? You’re going to have to find another way. Silencing me isn’t going to be enough.”

The clergymen exchanged a long, meaningful look. The vulture dæmon bounced impatiently on the tabletop.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Because if we can’t silence you, we’re going to have to discredit you,” one finally said.

Lyra snorted, though the back of her mind was on her secret. “Good luck. Enjoy yourselves. I won’t worry. You’ve tried to discredit me before.”

She maintained her cool confidence as they stood. The servant finally arrived just as they were walking out; they took the food they were brought with them and left without closing the door after them. The Master rose from the sofa with a groan.

“Oh, Lyra,” he said, regretful. “I wish you had been kinder to them. We don’t have to agree with the Church—you know I don’t—but we must be able to coexist together or risk another war.”

“Then let there be war,” said Lyra stubbornly. “They were not kind to me.”

He walked over and stood beside her at the door. “They’re going to be watching you even closer now.”

She knew that. That was the _only_ regret she had about the exchange. Should she have tried harder to appease them?

“Then I shall have to be more careful.”

The Master bid her farewell and left, looking every bit like a man shouldering the world. Lyra locked the door after him. Within seconds, Will was back in the sitting room. Lyra stepped worriedly into the circle of his arms.

“I could hear it all,” he told her before she had to try and summarize what had happened.

Lyra pressed her forehead over his heart. She was beginning to feel ill again, though it might’ve been due to her worry this time.

“Will,” she said quietly, “I’m going to have to find you sooner than I thought. I can’t be here once I start showing. I think they may already suspect—and you were spotted here and I know what they assume about our relationship—and they’re getting more power and if they find a way to discredit me and get the public on their side then there will be little to stop them from gaining power back like they had it before…they’ll kill me, or our baby, or they’ll take our baby away, or they’ll…” she trailed off. The cruel reality was that they could do whatever they like if they were able to gain control like they had it when she was a child.

He shook his head at once. “They’re not going to touch you.”

“But they _could_ , Will. You don’t know what it was like in my world before my father’s war. They could do whatever they wanted.”

He walked her over to the sofa. She hadn’t realized how upset she was getting until she sat and realized her legs had been shaking underneath her. Pantalaimon jumped up into her lap and curled up over her stomach. She felt Kirjava wind around her ankles, though she jumped up and sat on Will’s other side afterwards. He was clearly trying to remain sensible about this entire ordeal, but Lyra knew there was no sense to be found: the Church didn’t follow the rules of his world and he didn’t yet understand the rules of hers.

“It’s not going to be possible for you to find the door before you start showing,” he finally said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pregnant woman still not showing at all by week eleven and that’s probably only two weeks away for you. You could hide it for a few weeks more if you were very careful about what you wore, but by week twenty everybody will know.”

“Then I’ve got eleven weeks to find you.”

Will clearly felt uneasy. “Lyra, I don’t know if you should come into my world before you have the baby. We have no idea if it’s safe…going from world to world when you’re pregnant. What if it does something to you? Plus we already know that spending time outside of your own world can make you sick…trying to recover from a birth in a world that will already make you ill doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“And what’s my alternative?” demanded Lyra. She felt frustrated, and sick, and upset. (And frightened.)

“Maybe I can find the door on my end. They connect so it stands to reason that it’ll be located in the same geographical location there as in your world. If you tell me where it is, I can find it and can come through there, to you, and we can stay here in your world until the baby is born and you’ve recovered, and then we can go to my world for a spell.”

“But I _can’t_ stay here—!”

“Not _here_. We’ll stay somewhere else. With Serafina. With your Gyptians. With Iorek. _Somewhere_.”

She hadn’t considered that. The witches would know how to help her with her pregnancy, and Iorek would protect her better than anyone or anything, and the Gyptians would know all about taking care of babies. All were decent enough choices. And if Will was there with her…

“Maybe,” she said. “But that means…that means I’ve got to leave here soon.”

“Yes. I think it does,” he said, and he sounded very sorry about that. Lyra felt sorry, too. Jordan was her home. She had grown up here. She’d been brought here as a sought-after, illegitimate child of aristocrats, and now she was fleeing to protect her own infant (sought-after, illegitimate, the child of an aristocrat.) It was almost funny. “We’ll decide the safest place for you to go, and I’ll help you get there, and once you’re safe there, you can figure out where the door is. And I’ll come to you.”

She was worried. “What if I can’t figure it out in time?”

“You will.”

He sounded certain. She would have to trust him. He leaned in and kissed her forehead.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said. His dark eyes were fierce with a determination that said _it will be all right because I’ll do whatever it takes to_ make it _all right._ “Let’s go have lunch underneath our tree. I’m sure the clergymen are gone now and nobody here will say that they’ve seen us. They haven’t thus far.”

She felt sick again and didn’t want to eat a thing, but she recognized that this was Will trying to cheer her up, and she wouldn’t mind the fresh air, so she nodded. They lay in the grass beneath the large oak in the Library Gardens and watched Kirjava and Pantalaimon whispering amongst the roses. It looked to be an intense conversation.

“They name the baby’s dæmon, you know,” Lyra told Will, realizing that he probably had no idea of the traditions in her own world. “The parents’ dæmons do. I’ve been thinking about that a lot…Stelmaria must’ve been the one who named Pan. I never heard my mother’s dæmon say a word that I can recall…though I guess he might’ve spoken with Stelmaria,” she mused, thinking about how close Kirjava and Pantalaimon were. Maybe Stelmaria and the golden monkey had been close in their own way, too. Had they been excited, Lyra wondered, like she knew Kirjava and Pan were? Had Stelmaria ever draped herself over Mrs. Coulter’s pregnant stomach, loving and protecting Lyra before she was even really there? Had the golden monkey ever…no, she stopped there. She couldn’t stretch her imagination far enough to imagine the golden monkey ever showing her any sort of compassion.

Will rolled over onto his side in the grass to face her. She looked over at him. She smiled as he reached out and brushed her hair from her eyes. “I wonder what they’ll pick…our dæmons, I mean.” A pause. He blinked, stunned. “I wonder what _we’ll_ pick. I’ve never thought about naming a child before.”

“Nor me,” Lyra agreed. The task suddenly seemed daunting.

Will’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “Lyra, how are dæmons born? I mean, the mums don’t birth them out, right?” Something occurred to him. He looked over at Kirjava. “The female dæmons don’t…?”

“No,” Lyra laughed, tickled by the thought. She kept on giggling. Will scowled at her for a moment, and then he leaned in and kissed her, his lips curved up in a smile as well.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he scolded, his lips brushing hers with each word. He kissed her again.

“Sorry,” she said, still laughing. “No, dæmons aren’t there at first when a baby is born. They appear shortly after when the baby starts being conscious of its surroundings and all that. It happens sooner for some and later for others…it’s often said that the longer it takes a baby’s dæmon to appear, the duller the child will be when they grow up.”

He considered that. “It doesn’t frighten people in your world? To see a little person without a dæmon?”

“No, because it’s considered part of the birth process. We don’t consider babies properly _here_ until their dæmon appears, because if it doesn’t that usually means something is very wrong, and then the baby usually…”

He understood. He looked as if the thought disturbed him. It disturbed her, too.

“I thought you’d be used to that. Babies being sick and dying. Working in a hospital and all that,” she said thoughtfully.

He grimaced. “It feels different talking about it here.”

She supposed talking about it with your arms around your pregnant lover, the future splayed out in front of you, was quite different than stumbling upon it in a work environment regularly.

She propped herself up on her elbow, eager to share and change the subject a bit. “We have loads of legends and theories and such regarding babies and their dæmons. A lot of people think the first form a baby’s dæmon takes is the final form of their soulmate’s dæmon. So if a baby’s dæmon is a baby mouse the first time it appears, parents will obsessively check to see if any of that child’s future romantic partners have mouse dæmons…it’s sort of funny, really.”

She wondered what Pan’s first form had been. She wondered if it was a kitten. Maybe the theory was true.

“A _baby_ mouse?” Will repeated. “Are the dæmons always in baby animal forms?”

“Yeah, that I know of, anyway. One of my friends from St Sophia’s had a baby last year. Her baby’s dæmon was always a baby animal, though it changed constantly it seemed. Her husband cried when the dæmon first appeared ‘cause it was a baby snake and apparently he’s terrified of people with snake dæmons.” Lyra snickered at the memory. But then she considered how she might feel if her baby’s dæmon appeared as a baby monkey and she stopped laughing.

“And do the parents’ dæmons take care of the baby dæmon? I mean, parents don’t touch the baby’s dæmon, right? Your parents never touched Pantalaimon?”

Lyra found the question interesting. “They wouldn’t have touched him—that would be wrong— but maybe Pantalaimon touched them before he knew any better. The parents’ dæmons usually teach etiquette to the baby’s dæmon. Probably they touch the parents once or twice without knowing any better and get scolded by the parents’ dæmons severely enough that they learn that it’s not okay to do. I don’t remember ever being outright taught not to, so it must have happened when I was very young.”

This seemed to make sense to Will. He nodded, accepting it. There was no more talk about babies the rest of the afternoon, but Lyra didn’t feel as if they were ignoring the situation; rather it felt as if they were becoming used to the idea in a quiet, easy way, giving each other time to let it sink in, to let it feel _real_.

And, as it always happened, the time for Will to go back to his own world arrived, always quicker than Lyra could stand. But this time, before he left, he pushed an envelope into her hands. She lifted it up and stared at the unfamiliar handwriting. _Lyra_ , it said. She looked up at Will, confused.

“What’s this?” she wondered.

He set his hands on her hips and pulled her in for another kiss. “From my mother,” he explained, once their lips parted.

She felt her heart leap a bit in excitement. She looked up at Will again, her eyes bright. “Your mum? She wrote a letter to _me_?” She considered that. “Did you tell her about…?”

“Yeah,” admitted Will. “And I told her all about you and I showed her the photos we’ve taken. I didn’t read the letter, so I don’t know what it says, but I know that she’s happy for us, Lyra. And you know what? I’m happy for us, too.”

And as she kissed him again, she was, too. In that moment, she wasn’t worried about a thing, because she had him, and he had her, and when had they ever given up a fight that was important to them?

“I’ll read it and write back while you’re gone,” Lyra said. She pressed the letter to her heart, touched to think of someone as important to Will as his _mum_ taking the time to write to her. “Then you can take it back to her the next time you return.”

Will smiled. “I’ve got to tell Mary when I go back so don’t be surprised if I bring _five_ letters to you the next time. She’s going to have a lot of questions and a lot to say.”

Lyra was pleased to hear that. Maybe Dr. Malone could make more sense of this than she and Will could.

After Will disappeared—heading back to his own world for however many hours it took to keep his real, physical self from deteriorating—Lyra sat in the center of the bed, Pantalaimon in her lap, and opened the letter.


	3. adding shadows to the walls of the cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary searches for answers. The Consistorial Court of Discipline begins to regroup. Information comes to light that compromises Lyra's safety. Lyra and Will look to the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if anybody is actually reading (?? anybody alive out there?? am I throwing each chapter into the void?? is posting a pointless exercise??), but if so, something to note: this chapter features Dr. Malcolm Polstead (from Lyra's Oxford and The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage), BUT there are no spoilers for La Bella Sauvage. If you've read it you might catch a few references, though :)

_Monday 24th August_

_Dearest Iorek,_

_I was ever so pleased to receive your last letter and even more pleased still to hear how well you are doing. I have been paying special mind to all the whispers surrounding the ever-fragile ecosystem there in the North with great concern; it brings me such relief and joy to hear that things are better there in Svalbard. I daresay the state of things will only improve in the years to come, particularly due to the recent economic upswing in neighbouring areas. Nova Zembia recently invested quite a significant and impressive amount of money towards environmental conservation research. And, as I am sure you have heard, Sveden’s policies are shifting—once more—for the better. I receive news such as this with much love and gratitude for I am always thinking of you, my dearest friend._

_Things are well with me. I admit I have been spending my days quietly. You inquired about my work with the CPB, but presently, I have nothing to share._

_Warmly  
Lyra_

* * *

 

_Monday 7th September_

_Dearest Iorek,_

_By now you’ve probably received my first letter, though hopefully this one arrived shortly thereafter. I’m sure Kaisa explained why I sent this one with him rather than through the post the usual way, but just in case he didn’t have time to linger, I’ll explain here as well. The Master—as well as Farder Coram—heard rumors of the Church intercepting letters, and considering my low standing with the Church presently, I feared writing anything too personal in any letter sent the usual way. I wrote a dull reply just for the sake of appearances and sent that one through the post first; Kaisa delivered this one personally to ensure it was not read by anybody but you._

_Much has happened since I last saw you. You wrote about the CPB; I wish it were true that I had nothing to report. Rather, there have been quite a few disturbing developments over the past few weeks. I found a room in an orphanage here in Oxford where the Church has been storing many personal effects of the General Oblation Board (files, tools, and whatnot, including the blade they used to sever children.) I was “reassured” (in quotations, my dear, because I’m sure you understand just how little I was actually reassured!) by the Church that these were merely being hoarded for posterity’s sake. However, a week following this discovery, we received word of two more missing children. Both poor, both close to settling-age. As of now, we cannot locate the children or prove the Church is in anyway involved, but I have no doubts. I have alerted many high-ranking individuals who have, in turn, written editorials, spoken with politicians, alerted police, and held conferences with the Church. The current story for the public—the story that the CPB is receiving, as well—is that the Church is doing ‘theoretical research’ only and that no children are actually being touched or harmed. Likewise, the current story for the public is that I’m a raving madman with a manic, obsessive hatred for religion and the Authority, bent on taking the Church and everybody’s souls down with it._

_As always, the Church is spinning half-lies without a stitch of dedication. They wouldn’t dare tell the public any truth about the war so they rely on insinuation and use my parents as props. Currently, the public is still wary of the Church, mostly due to the recent missing children. Should the Church stop kidnapping children—or at least become better at it so that it isn’t noticed—they might possibly succeed in turning public opinion against me. And then I admit I’m not sure what comes next. For many years I’ve been the most vocal opponent of the Church and one of the most trusted. If I go down, the CPB does, too, and then what?_

_Iorek, I’m frightened. I know I’ll master it just as you would do, but presently I’m overcome by it, and that is not easy to admit. I will have a child in the early spring. I’m frightened not for me but for her or him. Under the current state of things, I can’t safely stay here much longer, but leaving feels quite like running, and running feels cowardly. I feel torn in two different directions._

_Should I choose to flee, can I count on you—on Svalbard? I hate to ask because we both know what it will mean if come there: trouble for you and trouble for your kingdom. Serafina is aware of my current situation, but she fears having me at Lake Enara, for three different nearby clans have failed to sway from the Church’s influence since the war and it could lead to dangerous tension in the Witch-Lands—and danger for me. She has sworn her presence at my side in Svalbard should you wish to have me there. And I shall have Will at my side as well. It’s a long story, dear Iorek, and one I wish to tell you in person._

_Yours  
Lyra_

* * *

 

_8 September_

_Lyra Silvertongue:_

_You are always, have always been, and will always be a welcome and honored visitor to Svalbard. It does not matter to me what trouble tries to follow after you. Let it: it will not get very far._

_I would be honored to have you and your family here. You, your child, and the boy will be protected, now and until I die._

_My dear friend, there is no shame in protecting those who rely on you. There is no shame in taking care of yourself. The fight will still be there when this journey is done._

_Come. I will be waiting for you. There will be a fire burning in your cottage now and every day until you have arrived. Here you will always have a friend and a warm place to rest._

_Iorek Byrnison_

* * *

 

Will was feeling quite impatient.

“Okay,” he said to Mary—for probably the thirteenth time that hour. He gripped his bag tighter in his hand and threw his head back on the pillow. “I’m going now.”

He shut his eyes. He felt Lyra’s presence floating nearby, soft and sweet and _integral_ , and he let his mind unhook and drift up towards it…but before he could, he felt Mary’s hand grab his again.

“Don’t forget to monitor your _intention_ before you become solid. My theory is that the body you have in Lyra’s world is formed via the Dust that crowds around you as you interact with her: if you find yourself getting corporeal without having interacted with Lyra—and note _how_ you interacted with her, too, Will—was it physical? Verbal? Eye contact? What _exactly_ happened?—take note of it at once and then pay special attention to what triggers the flowing of your mind into a physical form. Oh, and tell Lyra the blood results, yes? And tell her—”

Will heard Kirjava hiss so softly that only he could make it out. He was feeling just as irritated as she was.

“Mary!” he snapped. He sat back up. His heart was pounding. She looked slightly taken aback by his tortured expression; her dark eyes softened with concern. “I haven’t seen her in a week now. She was vomiting daily the last time I saw her. I don’t even know how she is. She could’ve gotten very ill—she could be in hospital, which would mean the Church would know—she could be miserable or upset or in danger or ill or _scared_ …” he trailed off, his heart giving a weird, panicked squeeze. His throat narrowed. “I just want to go. I appreciate how you’re helping me, but I need you to _let me go_. Stop talking to me.”

She nodded at once. She held her palms out. “I’m sorry, of course. Go to her. I’ll be here taking notes and watching over you, as always.”

Will threw his head back down. He shut his eyes. He inhaled deeply once, held it, and then let it out slowly. As he did, he sensed her again: Lyra. He let his mind float up, and up, and up, and he saw her sitting room in his mind: dirtier than usual, with dishes overflowing on the table, mainly glasses and mugs. Wherever there wasn’t a used mug or cup, there was a book, or a balled-up piece of paper, or a half-written letter, or an opened envelope. And there she was sitting in the midst of it, a letter held in her hands, Pantalaimon draped over her shoulders. Will’s vantage point had him looking at her from across the table and the distance between them felt sharp and torturous. He framed his intention carefully in his mind: _I want to go see her. I want to hold her, I want to kiss her, I want to see how she’s feeling and how she’s been…_

As his heart swelled with longing and his mind began imagining their impending reunion, he felt weighted. He could feel the carpet beneath his bare feet. He could hear the distant sound of what he recognized now as the dinner bell. Kirjava jumped up onto the messy tabletop and darted around and over obstacles to get to Pantalaimon; she leaned in and pressed her nose to the pine marten’s in greeting and then rubbed her face briefly against Lyra’s shoulder, purring all the while. Lyra looked up from her letter at once, her face brightening with a beam, and her smile was so beautiful that Will almost missed the tears sparkling in her eyes. Concern overtook him. He crossed over and stood behind her chair, leaning in to wrap his arms around her from behind. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head. Her arms closed around his, holding them around her, and he didn’t know what shocked him more: the sudden feeling of Pantalaimon nuzzling his neck or the feeling of the firm, noticeable swell of her abdomen beneath his arms. Both sent a shock down his spine and to his toes. Both left him feeling shaken, touched, and honored. He pressed light kisses over her cheekbones, her temples, her nose, her lips—anywhere he could reach, his heart full and aching with tenderness.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her at once, his voice hushed as it often was when they saw each other again. He had never in his life experienced the sort of sacred devotion in a church that he felt here in Lyra’s arms.  

“Nothing,” she lied, and it was with prideful stubbornness that she reached up to impatiently scrub her eyes with the backs of her hands. She inhaled deeply and then turned her face to the side so she could press a kiss to Will’s bicep. “I missed you.”

He had missed her more than he could possibly say. He removed his arms from her long enough to sit in the seat beside hers, and then he reached out and pulled her over and onto his lap once Pantalaimon had slid from her neck to go join Kirjava on the sofa. Lyra hid her face into the crook of his neck at once.

“I missed _you_ ,” he told her softly. “Is that why you’re upset?”

“No,” she admitted. She looked up and then leaned forward to pull the letter she’d been reading from the table. She passed it over to Will wordlessly. He brought it up to eye-level and scanned it quickly. It was a short letter. It was from Iorek. And as he read it, his heart softened, and he understood. These weren’t bad tears, these were good ones. The letter evoked the same sort of tearful relief in Will as it had done in Lyra, though he did not cry. The issue of _where_ Lyra would go to spend her pregnancy had been heavy on their minds lately—especially now that she was starting to show. Will had initially been skeptical about Svalbard due to the extreme temperatures, but as he looked down at Lyra and swept the sparse tears from her rosy cheeks, he realized Svalbard had probably always been the only option. They needed to go someplace where Lyra would feel safe and loved. Iorek Byrnison had always made her feel that way.

“I’m okay. I just didn’t realize how worried I was about not having any place safe to go ‘til I got this letter and I’m just so relieved,” she admitted. She laughed shakily a moment later. “And anyway, I’ve been crying so much lately. It’s not surprising.”

“She’s telling the truth,” called Pantalaimon from across the small room. “I can’t remember the last time she cried so much.”

In response, Lyra shot a scowl at him from over her shoulder. Kirjava snickered softly, amused. Will smiled as Lyra moved back into his embrace, relieved that nothing was wrong, and in fact, something good had happened. He held her close and kissed her hair.

“You’ll feel loads better soon. The exhaustion, the sickness, the mood swings…they usually go away in the second trimester. You’re nearly there. Another week,” he promised her.

The words _another week_ hung in the air, ripe with potential and promise, but also intimidating and unsure. They had decided two weeks ago that the best time for her to make this journey would be early on in the second trimester. Most women felt much better then—which would make the actual traveling easier—and she couldn’t stay at Jordan any longer as she’d soon be too pregnant to disguise it with careful clothing choices. Her departure from Jordan was looming, imminent and frightening, and Will couldn’t help but wonder if that was part of the reason for her tears. Who knew if she’d ever come back?

“I won’t miss the sickness,” she vowed. She sat up in his lap. “Did you find everything on the list we made? Did your world have those things?”

His heart jumped with nervousness and excitement. In the rush of reuniting with her again, he had forgotten the bag he’d brought with him. He had been tasked with purchasing the baby items she’d need to have before she left (they hadn’t known before where they’d be going and couldn’t risk getting stuck somewhere without any items), and much to his surprise, shopping for them had been an extremely exciting experience. It had made it all feel much more _real_ to him _._ He, his mum, and Mary had gone to all sorts of baby shops he’d never even looked twice at before. He had never been one to think tiny socks or dresses were cute, but he found himself melting internally as they perused the shops, thinking of the half-blurry mental image he’d begun to think of whenever he and Lyra talked about The Baby _._

He had dropped the bag he’d carried into this world on the floor. He pointed over at it. “I found everything on our list and more. My world has entire shops just for babies.”

She looked pleased, and it gave Will such a deep feeling of satisfaction that he could only grin stupidly for a moment. He liked nothing more than he liked helping her; it made him feel as if he were being a useful and supportive father to the child that wasn’t here yet, and that was important to him.

“What else can I do?” he wondered. “What else do you need?”

She peered off towards the wall as she thought, her expression furrowed thoughtfully. “There’s not _that_ much left to do before I go. I’ve got to get back in contact with Ma Costa to see if I’ll be able to sail with them to the north or not, and if not, I’ll have to arrange other means. Now that Iorek’s response made it back to me and I have a better idea of _where_ I’m going there are only a few more things left to do. I need to do some shopping, though there’s no point trying to buy furs and such here, as they’ll be no good up north. I’ll have to make those purchases there. But I ought to buy more clothes to wear under my furs that will fit me later on…once I’m on Svalbard I’ll only have what I’ve brought with me.”

Will jumped at the chance to help more (and to limit the number of times she had to go out in public in her Oxford). “I can get you more clothes. Mary and my mum can help. We have shops just for pregnant women, too.”

She was shaking her head before he’d even finished. “No way. I remember the sort of clothes _you_ think are practical.”

“I _promise_ no trousers.” He crossed his heart with his finger. Lyra looked oddly at him. He guessed that wasn’t a gesture commonly done in her world.

“I dunno. _Maybe_ ,” she allowed, her eyes still narrowed a bit suspiciously as if she thought this was secretly a ploy to get her in trousers.

He had to grin. “Though you know you’ll be much warmer in trousers.”

She pushed off his lap and scowled teasingly at him. He laughed, and she laughed, too, and soon they were standing together and Will was holding her close again. He looped his arms around her hips and marveled at the changing shape of her body.

“I can’t believe the difference a week made,” he admitted. Lyra always made him understand the miracle that bodies were, but this was something different entirely. When he saw that slight swell, he could hardly wrap his head around what was happening. Pregnancy had seemed common and somewhat boring when he’d done his gynecology rounds in medical school, but suddenly, the fact that a _baby—_ a real human baby—could live and grow inside a person was mindboggling to him, as if he were a child learning where babies come from for the first time (as if it had all been a mere hypothetical concept before _Lyra_ was experiencing it.) He had seen more children born than he could count, but it all seemed faraway and make-believe to him. _This_ seemed real. _This_ was tangible, poignant, and wondrous beyond all imagining.

“For the longest time there was no change at all, and now I feel like I look bigger every day,” she agreed. “Sometimes even overnight! I thought maybe it was all in my head, but Pan thinks so, too. We tried to measure the bump this morning but Pan lost the tape measure the last time we did.”

Will looked over towards the sofa where Kirjava and Pantalaimon were talking intently (as they often were.) He knew it was an odd thought to have—because Pan was Lyra and Lyra was Pan—but he was abruptly so thankful that _Pantalaimon_ was her dæmon that he couldn’t speak. He loved Pantalaimon as deeply as he loved Lyra, and the thought of the two of them in front of the bathroom mirror, laughing as they tried to measure her pregnant stomach, made Will want to sweep them both up into his arms.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her lips. Her eyelids fluttered shut. Her soft smile made Will lean in and kiss her again, and again, and again, his entire heart bursting with love for the woman in his arms.

“How have you been feeling? Besides the crying,” he asked softly. God, if he could have taken every ounce of discomfort from her and felt it for her, he would have.

“All right. The nausea has been loads better this week. I’m still really tired, but I think it’s because I’m bored. I haven’t left my room in two days. Last time I tried I saw the chaplain outside the library with some clergymen I’ve never seen before. They didn’t see me, and I don’t think they would have noticed anything had they done, but it worried me. They’ve been around quite a lot, the Master says. And I think the Master noticed my state a few days ago when he came by for tea. I’ll have to tell him soon I expect.”

Will couldn’t imagine how miserable Lyra had been shut up here alone for two days. His affection was drowned at once by his guilt.

“Let’s go out while I’m here,” he decided. “We can take a walk tonight when there aren’t many people out.”

She brightened at the suggestion. “ _Ooh_ , we could sneak back into the Retiring Room! I want to see it one more time before I leave. Seems right.” Her smile faded a bit. “I would like to see it _all_ before I leave, one last time. The roofs, the grounds, the crypt… _my_ Jordan and _my_ Oxford. But—”

“No ‘buts’,” he interrupted firmly. His heart was aching for her and with her. “I’m here. We can go wherever you want.”

He wasn’t sure it was the best idea. He heard Pantalaimon begin to say something—probably something close to what Will was currently anxiously thinking—but Kirjava murmured something to him and Pan stopped. When Will looked over at Pantalaimon, their eyes met, and a current of understanding flowed between the two: if she was to leave her home for the foreseeable future, they would travel it and enjoy it one last time together, and Will (and Pan, and Kirjava) would do whatever he had to do to keep her safe while they did.

* * *

 

She wore a long, flowy dress covered in a billowy cardigan. Will stepped back after she was dressed and appraised her from all angles.

“I don’t know,” he finally admitted. He could still see the modest distention of her lower abdomen, its shape firm and distinctive enough not to be mistaken for mere weight gain, but he also knew the truth and maybe that colored his perception.

Lyra turned her eyes to Will’s dæmon. “Kirjava? What do you think?”

Kirjava took the task seriously. She paced circles around Lyra for nearly two full minutes, stopping every few feet to sit and stare hard at Lyra, her fluffy tail brushing the floor as she did. Every now and then, she’d move over and snag at the skirt of Lyra’s dress with her claws, pulling the fabric this way or that, studying how it affected her appearance. Finally, she moved over towards Pan and whispered something to him. Pantalaimon jumped up into Lyra’s wardrobe at once; Will heard the sound of him knocking about in there. He came out holding a thicker cardigan, this one hand-knitted with chunky wool yarn. Lyra understood at once.

“Oh, yes, I think that _will_ be better,” she told Kirjava, and it gave Will the strangest thrill to watch them talking-without-talking, almost sharing thoughts.

Lyra pulled the first cardigan off and threw it carelessly onto the floor beside her bed. While she pulled the thicker one on, Will walked over and picked up all the various clothing items they’d ruled out, smoothing the wrinkles from them and placing them back on hangers. He had them nicely hung in her wardrobe by the time Lyra called for him again.

“Will? Is this better?”

He turned. The tension bunched up near his heart unknotted. He smiled. The bulky cardigan was just abhorrent enough to both distract from her form _and_ drown it entirely. “Yeah. That’s a lot better.” He turned to look for Kirjava, to thank her for her help, but she was already brushing his ankles. He leaned over and picked her up. He cradled her in his arms and felt her rumbling purrs deep in his heart. He didn’t have to say _thank you_ : the words flowed between them.

While Lyra combed through her hair, Will searched the floor of her wardrobe for a pair of shoes. He kept clothes here now—he often traveled over into her world in his pajamas—but he couldn’t seem to find his other boot. He considered one of the ‘tests’ Mary had wanted him to try and thought he’d give it a go. He sat back and closed his eyes. He pictured himself wearing a pair of trainers. He imagined the way the trainers would feel on his feet, even the pinch of the too-tightly-tied laces. But no matter how hard he imagined it, he couldn’t get them to appear out of thin air. It fit with Mary’s theory that this copy of his body was gifted to him to use for a specific purpose and he wasn’t able to think just anything he wanted into physical existence. He would tell her he tried it once he returned.

“Have you seen my other boot?” asked Will. He pushed a few pairs of heels out of the way and stuck his head further into the dark, messy space. What he needed was a torch. He had no idea how Lyra managed to get the wardrobe messy again so quickly after he organized it…“I swear I left them just here…”

Pantalaimon crawled into the dark recesses of the wardrobe. A few moments later, he appeared dragging the boot behind him. Will smiled.

“Thanks, Pan.”

He changed into a pair of trousers and a shirt that wouldn’t be too conspicuous in Lyra’s world, laced his boots up, and then walked out into the cool Jordan air with Lyra, hand-in-hand. He was careful to keep his left hand in his pocket, though, as his mutilated fingers seemed to be his main distinguishing feature as far as the Church was concerned.

While they walked, Will filled Lyra in on what Mary had been up to recently. They had done different sorts of tests two weeks ago, when Will finally told Mary about Lyra’s pregnancy, to determine once and for all whether or not Will had his own body in this world at any point. Mary had pricked Will’s finger in his world at a predetermined time and Will had waited to see if he’d feel the pain or see the pinpoint of blood in Lyra’s, but he hadn’t. Then, a few moments after that, he pricked his finger in _this_ world and Mary watched to see if there would be any evidence of that on his body in _his_ world. There hadn’t been. No test they thought up (and Mary thought up a lot) pointed towards Will actually physically traveling between the worlds. Mary watched him in his own world for nearly seven hours straight once, taking notes and making sure he didn’t disappear into thin air even for a few moments, and determined that he hadn’t done anything but lay in a deep sleep until his consciousness returned. Which baffled her all the more, because if his body was undeniably _there_ , how on earth was he physical in Lyra’s world? How could he have gotten her pregnant? She had written to Lyra asking if Lyra would provide a blood sample for a non-invasive prenatal paternity test— a test that would examine the DNA makeup of the fetus and compare it to samples from the dad to see if they were a genetic match—and Lyra had obliged, though she’d seemed a bit miffed that Mary didn’t just believe her and her alethiometer outright. So when Will told her now that the test had shown without a doubt that he _was_ the baby’s father, she merely scoffed.

“It’s what I told Mary all along. And you!” she said, somewhat defensively, as if she thought maybe he’d had his own doubts.

“ _I_ didn’t think it was anybody else’s,” he reassured her. “Mary didn’t either. It had nothing to do with her doubting that the baby was mine. She just wanted to see the scientific part of it. Now that we know the baby is absolutely genetically _mine_ that means I’m actually physically _here_ —as in, this body has the same exact physical make-up as my own, and that’s sort of a big deal.”

“Well, we knew that already, too. ‘Cause my alethiometer said so, and _you’re here_ , like _this_ ,” she leaned her side into his. “I can touch you, see? And you wouldn’t look like you if you weren’t _you_.”

“Yes, but, it helps to see it proven.”

“Yes, but, you two are too reliant on your science tools,” she shot back.  

“Hey, my science tools are handy. I was able to run all the typical first trimester blood tests with your samples. Which showed me important things, proof that our baby is developing perfectly.” Now if only he could figure out a way to get the technology needed for an ultrasound here.

“I know the baby is developing perfectly ‘cause—”

“Your alethiometer told you,” Will finished for her, mocking her exact tone perfectly. She knocked her side into his again playfully. “Try to humor me, yeah? I trust you and your alethiometer, I do, but it doesn’t hurt to see it proven in my world’s way, too.”

She relented. “I suppose you’re right.”

A comfortable, happy silence settled over them as they walked hand-in-hand. Will kept an eye out for anybody suspicious, but so far, they’d only passed by servants, bricklayers, and stressed college students presumably headed towards the library for last minute cramming.

“Will?” asked Lyra.

He looked down at her. He liked the way the darkening sky made her eyes seem a deeper blue than usual.

“Hmm?”

She looked down at her feet as she walked. Ahead of them, Pantalaimon and Kirjava slowed so they could catch up to them.

“Does Mary have any idea _why_ you’re able to travel like this?”

Will wouldn’t have thought anything of the question—it was a natural question to have—if it weren’t for the way she was steadily avoiding his eyes, looking instead at the pavement. He looked over at Pan from the corner of his eye. He had moved to walk on Lyra’s other side and he was staring off into the distance as well, avoiding Kirjava’s gaze. Will frowned.

“She’s got some theories,” answered Will slowly. “Why? Did you…have you asked your alethiometer?” Suddenly nervous of what she’d say, Will looked down at his own feet, too. He was so petrified that all of this would come to end somehow, that he would learn something that would mean he wouldn’t be able to see her again, or that they weren’t really _meant_ to be together again. It all felt so perfect, and he had never felt so _close_ to anybody before, and because his natural state seemed to be loneliness, he was constantly waiting with bated breath for the last shoe to drop. For this to be taken from him, too.

“Not _exactly_ ,” she hedged. “I haven’t asked why you’re able to be here like this. I asked if you were really here, and it said yes. I asked if it was really you, and it said yes. I didn’t ask _why_ you’re here…but there are other things I’ve asked—questions about the baby—that I’ve gotten strange answers to that I can’t make sense of. So I didn’t know if…if maybe Dr. Malone had any idea what this traveling is or how it works or _why_ you’re able to do it.”

“She’s got ideas,” Will repeated. “But we’ve no way to prove any of it. She thinks that whichever angel hid the door that was left open between our worlds somehow gifted me the ability to be here like this, the ability to have a copy of myself, to be physical. She’s playing around with the idea now that I was given some sort of…of…well, we don’t know exactly. _Poison_ is the word Mary’s been using, but I think what I’m doing is wonderful, so I don’t like to think of it that way. But we both find it odd that I was able to suddenly travel like this right after I got terribly ill. We don’t know if maybe what made me ill also gave me the ability to do this. But then we had to wonder _why_ …why would an angel go to all this trouble just to give me the ability to travel like this? What had to happen that I had to be physical for? And then Mary wondered…”

He trailed off. Lyra was looking at him now, her expression rapt with attention.

“If you were meant to get me pregnant,” Lyra finished for him, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

Will nodded once. He was equally terrified and intrigued by the idea. “Yeah. Because what else would I need my own body for, anyway? We could reunite and talk just fine without me being corporeal. We could work together to find the door just fine without me having my body. But they made a point to give me the ability to _be here_ , to touch you, to be with you.”

“And it felt so right, Will,” she reminded him. He looked down at her and met her eyes, so rich and lovely blue that he felt he could’ve sank into them entirely. He knew _precisely_ what she meant. “Making love to you that first time…we both didn’t even question it. There was no hesitation, was there? We just…I saw you and I felt… _God_ , as if I didn’t have you I might’ve…”

“Gone mad,” Will completed.

“Yes,” she said softly. She moved in closer to his side and dropped his hand so she could wind their arms together instead. She leaned into him. “And it feels just as wonderful now, Will. Just as perfect and lovely. And I wonder if…if somehow the angel knew that. I dunno how they could know that—how they could know how we’d feel about each other—but maybe they knew we’d be so…”

She searched for the right word. Will wasn’t sure what it was, either. Desperate? Consumed? Nothing felt exactly right.

“Is that what was meant to happen, then? You and me, the baby?” she wondered.

It was all a perfect storm of ingredients: take two first loves—children who went through things so uniquely traumatizing together that nobody else in the universe would ever understand except those two, children whose dæmons had bonded in a way none ever have before, children who became not-children within each other’s arms—and rip them away from each other, from the future they’d only just discovered and planned, and make them spend over a decade thinking they’ll never get to see the other again, and then put them back together suddenly in a room, and _of course_ Will wasn’t going to be thinking of contraceptives. Of course Lyra wasn’t going to be, either. Of course all they would think about would be each other, and getting as close as possible. and _staying_ as close as possible. If something out there had conspired to make this baby happen, it wouldn’t have been difficult as soon as they got Will in the same room as Lyra.

“I don’t know if it was _meant_ to happen because I don’t think anybody can tell us what our destiny is. But if somebody were _trying_ to make that happen…if they were trying to set up a situation where we _could_ conceive a child…well, it would’ve been easy for them to do, really, once they found a way to reunite us,” he admitted. He felt it would’ve been obvious to anybody who had ever seen them together that loving each other came naturally to them. “But _why_? Why would somebody want us to have a child? And if all they wanted was _this—_ ” he looked pointedly at her middle— “then why can I still travel here? Why not just take the power away from me now that it’s over and done with?”

“Maybe it’s not something that can be taken away. If it was a poison, right, maybe it changed something about you and gave you this ability for life,” she mused. She pressed her lips together and pursed her brow as she thought. Another idea came to her and her face opened with realization. “ _Or maybe_ you can still travel here because that’s not all you’re meant to do! Maybe you’re meant to be here for this next part, too—my journey, the baby’s birth. Until we are _really_ together,” she guessed.

Will thought that was probably quite likely, but he still couldn’t make sense of the larger picture. “But why would somebody care so much about you and I having a baby? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps it has something to do with the witch’s prophecy about me,” suggested Lyra. The way she suggested it—with a forced casualness that betrayed her vulnerability—told Will she’d wondered this for a while now. “Maybe…maybe I wasn’t told everything before. Maybe nobody _knew_ everything before. Maybe this is a part of it nobody’s heard of yet, a part that nobody could know about until it happened. My alethiometer…this is what I was talking about before. Those strange answers I’ve been getting, remember? Well, when I ask questions about the baby and the prophecy, it’s very short and guarded. The answers are beyond complex. I don’t know what it all means. It frightens me.”

It frightened him, too. And in a way, it made him angry. He didn’t like the idea that he had been coerced into anything by any sort of angel, or Dust itself, or _anything_. But then again, no matter what workings had gone on behind the scenes without his knowledge, he was acutely aware of the fact that nobody had _made_ him make love to her. He had done it because he wanted to, because he loved her, because he wanted her to feel loved, because he knew nothing in the world would feel better than that or _be_ better than that. And hadn’t he been aware of the risks of not using protection? He had been aware of it enough to bring it up with Lyra, to make efforts the next time to be safer. He had made a series of decisions all on his own, of his own will and volition, independent from any sort of higher power, and those decisions were what had led him here, not anything else. He would have to be content with that. He would have to remember that this baby was _theirs_. It didn’t matter what plan the angel who may or may not have given him this gift of travel or left that door open had for the child; it wasn’t that angel’s child. It was _his_ _and Lyra’s_. It was its own little person, or it would be, once it was here. It didn’t have to do anything, fulfill anything, or change anything. And if that angel thought Will wouldn’t feel that way, it hadn’t done its research about him.

“It doesn’t matter what the reason is,” Will said to Lyra, voicing the decision he had quietly come to on his own. His voice sounded as confident as he felt. “It doesn’t matter. And I don’t care. I don’t care why the angel left the door open. I don’t care why I was given this gift. Our child exists because I love you and you love me. Our child exists because we made love—that’s what _we_ did. _We_ chose that.”

“I don’t regret it,” said Lyra fiercely.

He wrapped his arm tightly around her waist, his fingers brushing the swell of her stomach, and then kissed the side of her face. “I don’t, either. Not for a second.”

She smiled.

“So it doesn’t matter what your alethiometer hints at, or what this angel might tell us our child’s destiny is. Our child will choose its own destiny because our child isn’t something to be used. We’ll love him or her, and we’ll take care of them, and we’ll live our lives doing the right thing as we would even if we didn’t have a child. And we’ll teach them to do the right thing, too. And if that child ends up growing up and doing something to change the world for the better…well, then it’ll be their choice, and I shall be so proud I can’t even speak. But _the child_ will decide. This angel doesn’t.”

He knew his father would have said the same of him had he known what Will was ‘destined’ to do in his boyhood. And Will knew with just as much certainty that he would have decided to do exactly what he’d done even if his dad had known ahead of time (because his dad would have given him a choice). Will’s actions reflected Will’s own heart, not the universe’s advances, and that could never change. He would _never_ let it change for his and Lyra’s child.

She was far more affected by his words than he’d expected she’d be. She must’ve been so worried for so long before she’d brought the topic up. After they’d snuck into the Retiring Room—which was quite easy to do at this time of night—she pushed him back against the wardrobe in the far corner, absolutely brimming with passion and emotion. She kissed him so hard and so ardently that Will could only respond with the same. They gasped and pushed and pulled at each other, their hands grappling for purchase underneath clothes, their lips meeting over and over again in burning delight.

They couldn’t know the future. They had no idea what was in store for them. But for the next half-hour or so, they were simply whole.

* * *

 

After a couple of hours spent roaming around Jordan College in the dark like runaway children, a bath with Will once they’d returned home, and some hot chocolatl, Lyra finally wound down for the night.

She fell asleep in his arms quickly; she was bone-deep exhausted and his presence soothed her. Her sleep was deep and dreamless—until it wasn’t. She woke abruptly an uncertain amount of time later, unsure what had woken her. Will was still tangled up with her, his body warm and inviting, Pantalaimon was snoozing against her back, and Kirjava was fast asleep near Will’s head. She didn’t hear any odd noises that might have disturbed her sleep. She felt okay: there was no nausea to complain of and the temperature in the bed was pleasant and comfortable. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t drift back off to sleep. After tossing and turning irritably for an hour and trying everything (even turning and sleeping at the opposite end of the bed), she gave up.

She was as quiet as she could be as she crept from the bed, but Pantalaimon still woke. He slipped from the bed as she did and moved to lean against her bare leg as she pulled her dressing gown on over her nightie. Lyra leaned over tiredly and lifted him up into her arms.

“What’s wrong?” Pan whispered. He yawned a second later; Lyra found herself yawning along with him. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Lyra whispered back. She and Pantalaimon left the bedroom so they wouldn’t disturb Will and Kirjava and went towards the sitting room. “I woke up. Dunno why. Can’t sleep.”

She threw herself down onto the sofa and yawned again into Pan’s fur. He nuzzled her shoulder tiredly.

“Maybe some warm milk might help?”

“Maybe. I expect the servants might not like being disturbed this late, though.” She didn’t want to call on them. She sometimes kept powdered milk and herbs on hand that she could mix with water from her anbaric kettle, but she’d used the last of it four nights ago for a similar reason.

“I expect not,” Pantalaimon agreed. He lay quietly in her arms for a few more minutes. Lyra tried sleeping on the sofa to see if the change in location would help at all, but her body stubbornly refused. She looked up at the dark ceiling and sighed.

“I give up,” she said.

She’d expected Pan to already be asleep—he’d moved to the arm of the sofa—but he replied.

“We could look at the baby things Will bought. He left them for us over there.” Pan pointed at the bag Will had brought with him. It was sitting on the floor near the table. Lyra perked up at the idea.

“Yeah, let’s do that!” she agreed eagerly. Her evening had been so busy—especially in comparison to her horribly dull past week—that she’d almost forgotten about all the items Will had picked up for them, and baby things were so alien to her that examining them almost felt like a bit of an adventure. She walked over and grabbed the bag—it was surprisingly heavy— and carried it back over to the sofa. Pan turned on the decorative naphtha lamp near the sofa and joined her. Lyra unzipped the heavy canvas bag and reached in curiously. She felt something wonderfully soft, softer than anything she’d ever felt in her world, and she pulled the object out. It was a small white blanket of a fabric Lyra had never before seen. She rubbed her hand on its softness, then brought it up to her cheek, and then pressed her face into it. Pantalaimon was rubbing his body against it like a cat might.

“What sort of fur is _this_?” marveled Lyra. She had never known a creature to have such soft fur. It didn’t _feel_ like fur. But it wasn’t cotton or wool or silk, either. She draped the intriguing blanket over her stomach. She set her hand on her growing bump. She felt tender amusement at both herself and the situation. “Can you imagine how cuddly the baby will be in this, Pan?”

Pantalaimon was feeling the same sort of giddiness that was growing in Lyra. He laughed as he rolled over the blanket again, rubbing his face into it, delighting in its softness. “If I were the baby’s dæmon, I would turn into a mouse and I would burrow right into this blanket!”

“You can teach it to do that,” Lyra told Pantalaimon. “The baby’s dæmon will be a baby, too, and might not know _how_ to do it.”

Pantalaimon seemed to like the idea of that just as much as Lyra loved the idea of her baby wrapped up in that blanket, warm and snuggled in her arms, safe and happy. She kept the blanket on her stomach as she pulled different items from the bag. He had bought all sorts of things, some that Lyra recognized—socks, blankets, rompers with a variety of adorable and hilarious patterns on them ( _their clothes are much more expressive in Will’s world,_ Lyra thought, looking over a romper covered in little images of colorful ducks), nappies (both the cloth kind and the sort you throw away)—and things that Lyra did not. She puzzled over a weird contraption made of black fabric with a confusing array of straps for at least three minutes before Pantalaimon found a pamphlet inside the bag. From the photogram on it, Lyra realized this contraption was meant to be strapped to the parent—either Mum _or_ Dad as shown on the photogram—and then the baby was meant to be set inside of it, so that the parent was wearing the baby around. “Sort of like a kangaroo!” Pantalaimon had exclaimed, delighted. Lyra and Pantalaimon laughed for quite a while at that. Then there was a confusing machine that reminded Lyra of a telephone, but it had a strange stick-thing at the end of the cord rather than a receiver, and Lyra couldn’t get it to turn on no matter how many times she mashed the three grey buttons under the screen. She wrestled internally with the merits of thin, cotton baby trousers before ultimately deciding they wouldn’t be _too_ bad, she grinned at the tiny baby jumpers, and Pantalaimon absolutely _adored_ the shoes. He stuck his front paws into a pair of tiny baby boots and tried to walk up and down the sitting room. Lyra laughed so hard her stomach ached.

“What’s a newborn baby need shoes for anyway?” she wondered. “It’s not as if it can walk.”

“Maybe to keep its feet warm. Shoes are warmer than socks,” Pantalaimon reminded her.

To Lyra, this was just another instance of how Will’s world was much more excessive than hers, but the boots _were_ adorable in the way all miniature things were, so she didn’t mind them. She didn’t even mind the different-colored baby trousers and decided she would use them even if the baby was a girl. She felt Will had done a great job getting things for the baby—she had thoroughly enjoyed looking through it, anyway—and was pleased when he came wandering out from the bedroom to find her.

“Lyra?” he asked, his voice still slurred with sleep. “You okay?”

“Yes. I just couldn’t sleep. Will, you did a really good job buying stuff for the baby. I love all this stuff, especially this baby blanket. I never felt anything like it before, never. It’s so soft,” she gushed. “And the baby clothes are all nicely made and look warm and comfortable. I dunno who comes up with all those silly patterns, but I love the ones with bunnies on them, and the ones that have cats that look sort of like Kirjava, and the duck ones. I don’t get this thing, though…” she pulled the weird machine out of the bag and held it up so Will could see it. “What does it do? It doesn’t turn on, see, I’m pressing right here at the buttons, but it’s not lighting up or anything. Is it meant to be plugged up?” she lifted the machine in the air and looked at the underside for a place to plug a cord in, but she didn’t see one.

“No, it’s battery powered. The batteries aren’t in it yet. They’re in the bag somewhere,” he explained. He yawned again. He almost seemed to be sleepwalking as he walked over and sat beside her on the sofa. She watched as he pulled the machine into his lap and then leaned over to fish through the bag for two cylinder-shaped things that must have been the batteries of his world. He pulled a hatch on the back of the machine open, plugged the batteries expertly into the back of the machine, and then closed the hatch back up. He flipped it over and pressed the center button just under the screen. The screen glowed bright blue at once; Lyra sat up straighter, waiting expectantly. But nothing else happened.

“I don’t get it. What is it?” she finally asked.

He set the machine to the side. “It’s a Doppler machine. Well, a handheld one, anyway. It’s not as good as the ones we use at the hospital, but it works well enough. It uses ultrasound waves to let you hear the baby’s heartbeat.”

This was not shocking to him. He said this and then leaned his head against her shoulder and yawned. But Lyra and Pantalaimon’s jaws had dropped. Lyra replayed his words in her head, stunned.

“It lets you hear the baby’s _heartbeat_? From inside the mum’s stomach? This early on?” Pantalaimon exclaimed, beating Lyra to it. She and Pantalaimon exchanged a surprised look, the same thrill racing through them. As far as Lyra knew, midwives and doctors in her world could only hear the baby’s heartbeat when the mum was very far along and a regular old stethoscope could be pressed to the outside of her stomach, and she had months to go until she was at that point.

“Yes,” Will affirmed. His eyes had shut; he still seemed to be fighting sleep. He slid his hand over into Lyra’s lap and moved it up until it was resting on her stomach. “The wand thing goes here on your stomach. The waves go through your skin and bounce back and this machine turns it into a sound you can hear. Doctors can hear all sorts of stuff with this, not just the fetal heartbeat…blood flow in the placenta, the baby kicking…” his words broke off with a deep yawn. Lyra was still sitting in a state of wonder. As soon as she’d processed what he’d said, she reached for the stick-thing on the machine.

“What do I do? I want to hear it. I want to hear it now,” she said, unrestrained excitement flooding her voice.

That seemed to wake Will up a bit more. He lifted his head from her shoulder and looked down at her. He appeared surprised by her enthusiasm. “Right now?”

“Yes! Yes, right now! I can’t believe you could do this all along and you never told me! Why haven’t we done this before?” she wondered.

“It’s difficult to find the heartbeat very early on. I’m not a sonographer, either, and the last time I used one of these was during medical school. When pregnant women come into A&E, a sonographer typically does this for me. So I wanted to wait a while until I was certain you were far enough along that we’d be able to find and hear the heartbeat— so we didn’t worry needlessly,” he explained. He stretched his arms above his head and yawned one more time. “Pan, will you get Kirjava?”

Pantalaimon shot off the sofa at once and went back to the bedroom to call for Kirjava. Will set the machine to the side and pulled a tube of something from the bag.

“Lie on your back and lift your shirt,” he said. Lyra was so excited about this machine that she complied at once. She turned and moved into a supine position. She moved the soft blanket off her stomach and lifted her nightie up to her breastbone. The night air was chilly and she shivered. She watched as Will moved the machine over and set it beside her hip. He set the tube beside it, too. Lyra already had goosebumps from the cold when Will leaned down and kissed between her ribs (that only made the goosebumps more pronounced.) He kissed her bellybutton—she laughed—and once over the swell of her stomach, seemingly in some sort of affectionate daze. Lyra was certain they would’ve gotten distracted had their dæmons not reentered the room a few moments later, but thankfully, they kept them on track. Pantalaimon held the machine in place so it wouldn’t fall off the sofa while Kirjava sat near Lyra’s shoulder and watched, her tail swishing happily all the while. Lyra shivered when Will squirted a strange, cold gel-like substance on her stomach.

“It’s transmission gel,” he explained to her. “It helps the machine hear what it needs to.”

That made absolutely no sense to Lyra and he might as well have been speaking Arabic. She heard her own heart begin to pound as he pressed the wand-like thing attached to the machine into the gel. He moved it around, pressing harder than Lyra expected that he would, his eyes on the illuminated blue screen. Lyra was trying not to wince from the pressure of the wand, but when noise emitted suddenly from the machine’s speaker, gradually drowning out the background static-like noise it was making constantly, she forgot everything but that.

“Is that it?” she asked wildly, her heart squeezing. The sound grew and became clearer as Will moved the wand again. His eyes were still on the blue screen, but he nodded, and she saw a breathtaking smile light up his face. They weren’t nearly as rare as they had once been, those smiles, but Lyra still caught herself hoarding each one in her heart all the same.

“But it’s so fast,” she blurted, alarmed. It was true: her baby’s heartbeat sounded like horses galloping, hard and fast and confusing. It was not the rhythm Lyra heard when she pressed her ear over Will’s heart, nor the sound she’d heard from Pan’s chest her entire life.

But Will was smiling. He wouldn’t have been smiling like that if something were wrong.

“It’s okay,” he reassured her, his voice oddly soft and hushed. He looked away from the blue screen—it was flashing numbers: _153, 152, 154—_ and met Lyra’s eyes. She was arrested by the emotion she saw on his face; it made her own heart swell and her eyes burn. “Better than okay. It’s a perfect heartbeat. It’s really good, Lyra.”

She replayed those words back to herself. _It’s really good, Lyra._ She felt fiercely proud, and protective, and thrilled. Lyra would’ve liked to have looked at Will and his soft, dark eyes all night, but her neck was hurting from holding it at such an odd angle, so she gradually let her head fall back against the cushions. She closed her eyes and she listened. And as joyous as she felt now, she was glad he hadn’t tried to let them listen to this before now. If they had tried to hear it and had only heard silence, she was certain her heart would have snapped in half. She was certain she would have been sick with worry for days. The certainty with which she felt that surprised her. She hadn’t realized how attached she was becoming to this baby—or at least the idea of it—until she realized how terrified she would’ve been had she thought something was wrong with it.

“I wish I could take you home with me, to my world,” he murmured softly, their baby’s rapid, fluttering heartbeat still filling the space around them. “We have ways to _see_ the baby while it’s still in the womb. We could be looking at it right now. You can see it moving and sucking its thumb and twisting around…and in a few weeks more, we’d be able to tell whether it’s a son or a daughter, and we could even print a little photo out, and we could measure and see how it’s growing and check for problems…” he trailed off. He seemed to realize he wasn’t gaining anything by letting himself long for it. “Well, I don’t think there’s any way for me to get the technology here, and anyway, it’s wired for our electric sockets, not your anbaric ones, and I wouldn’t know how to make an outlet converter.”

Ten minutes ago she would have been shocked to her bones to know they had a way to see into a woman’s stomach that was safe for the baby, but it seemed a natural next step to this strange machine he’d brought, so she didn’t feel much but quiet longing. She would’ve liked that, too. She would’ve loved to have seen the baby. But her world didn’t do that. She didn’t know much about what her world did, actually, because the only baby she’d ever seen was her friend from college’s, and she hadn’t been to a midwife here at all, fearing it wouldn’t be safe to. She didn’t know who she could trust here. She knew she could trust Will and Kirjava, and Serafina and Kaisa, and Farder Coram, and Iorek, but that was all she was _certain_ of. Even the Master—who had done so much for her, who had often filled in the role of _father_ during her childhood—she didn’t feel entirely confident in.

Will began to pull the wand away. Lyra reached out and caught his hand, her palm cupping the spot his little finger and ring finger had once been. “Wait, not yet.” His eyes met hers in the dim light, questioning and full of emotion. “I can hold it if your arm is tired. I just want to listen for a while more.”

He relaxed his arm. “It’s not tired. Okay, we’ll listen for a while more.”

Lyra lifted her legs up so he could sit beneath them and lean against the back of the sofa, so he’d be more comfortable. She laid them back down across his lap as soon as he was seated. He had to readjust the wand to get the sound back, but soon it was there, fast and strong and comforting. Lyra felt a yawn work its way up her throat. It was quiet except for that loud, repetitive sound. Lyra marveled in the strange discrepancies every now and then, the times it almost seemed to speed up or slow down mid-beat, reassured every time by Will murmuring ‘ _that’s okay, that’s normal’._ It was an utterly unique heartbeat. Their child was utterly unique. It would be the only person made from her and made from Will. The only person made from people from two different worlds…

Pantalaimon was tired. Lyra heard him murmur that to Kirjava. He let Kirjava take over holding the machine in place and moved instead to drape himself over Lyra’s throat. She set her hand in his fur. He was making a deep, contented rumbling sound in his chest, the sort that reminded her of Kirjava’s purrs, the sort she had heard so sparingly from him since he settled. She recognized it was a sound reflecting profound joy and felt tears prick her eyes in response, because she was feeling that too, and they were one within that emotion, one in life. And now they were _more_ than one.

At some point—she wasn’t sure when—she drifted off to sleep, Will’s hand moving the wand over her stomach to find a new position every time the sound weakened, the baby’s heartbeat a steady background noise to her own heart.

* * *

 

He was gone when she woke, though he had left a short note reassuring her he’d return by the evening. She stayed curled up on the sofa beneath the blanket he’d draped over her for nearly half an hour before she reluctantly rose. Pantalaimon was sleeping in the baby blanket Will had brought, cocooned in it like he’d said the baby’s dæmon might like to do, and Lyra made a mental note to tease him about it later.

She picked at the breakfast that had been dropped off for her at some point while she slept, not really excited by any of the items on the tray and rather eating just to stop the hunger pangs. As soon as she felt satisfied, she pushed the tray away and went to sit on the windowsill in her bedroom with her books. Her window was usually kept hidden behind heavy curtains that blocked out the bright sunlight, but sometimes she liked to sit on the wide ledge and look out at the passing students and Scholars. She had been doing it more lately, partially to keep her from feeling disconnected from the outside world, and partially so she could keep an eye on the comings and goings of Church clergymen.

She studied for two or three hours, looking up every now and then to scan the faces passing by or to wander into the kitchen for a cup of tea or coffee. She didn’t see much of interest. A few servants’ children got into a scuffle and had to be yanked apart by the Steward ( _they’ll get a whipping for that one,_ thought Lyra with a sting of pity), and three middle-aged, male Scholars from another college—probably Gabriel if Lyra was remembering faces right from all her forced socializing during her own college years—joined two Jordan scholars on the grass outside her room, and she watched with mild curiosity as the five walked around and talked intently for a couple of minutes, but then she gradually lost interest in them.

It wasn’t until later that afternoon that she saw anything that fascinated her, and when she did, it was not something she would have expected.

She was initially intrigued because it was a woman, but she wasn’t one of the servants employed by Jordan, or—to the best of Lyra’s knowledge—a female Scholar. She was probably in her late-thirties, she was dressed nicely in expensive skirts, and Lyra knew enough to recognize well-to-do ladies when she saw them. Lyra set her books to the side and faced the window completely, watching curiously to see where the woman might be headed. If she walked to the east, maybe she was headed to speak with the Master. The west, maybe she was going to speak with the Chaplain. But she didn’t head in either of those directions. Instead, she sat underneath a tree at the end of the courtyard and waited. She waited so long that Lyra nearly lost interest. But right when she was about to look back at her books, she saw somebody approach the woman—a young student of Jordan college, a boy she had once caught watching her in the dining hall (he had flushed with embarrassment when she’d caught him and had accidentally set his hand in his potatoes). Lyra was initially baffled. Why would this woman be meeting with a boy so young? What could she want? Was he somebody important and Lyra just didn’t know?

But she realized as the woman drew the boy into the circle of her arms that this was his _mother_. And of course it had taken her so long to come to that conclusion: she rarely saw maternal affection on a day-to-day basis. She rarely saw mothers venture onto Jordan property to hug their sons and share lunch with them beneath a tree. It was touching, and precious, and Lyra watched the two laugh and chat over sandwiches, wondering suddenly about things she’d never wondered about before.

“What are you looking at?”

She didn’t even turn to address Pantalaimon. She tapped the window in reply. Pantalaimon jumped up and stood on his hind legs, his front paws pressed against the glass, his eyes searching the landscape laid out in front of them. Lyra knew when he saw what she did, for she felt a resurgence of the feelings she’d felt before—amusement, fascination—and knew they were coming from Pan this time.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mum come all the way here before,” he said, intrigued.

“Nor have I. But _that’s_ the sort of mum that I’m going to be, Pantalaimon,” she decided, her voice bursting with pride and certainty as she watched the happy parent-and-child pair eating lunch, their dæmons content on the grass beside them.

After the boy left, probably to make it to a lecture, the mother stood, dusted her skirts off, and then walked over towards an archway to the right of the courtyard. She stood there for a minute or so. And then she was joined by three men.

“Oh no,” Pantalaimon said, his eyes on the men. Lyra’s heart sunk—one of the men was the clergyman who’d come to her home, the man with the vulture dæmon. She leaned closer to the window to try and see if she could read their lips to see what they were saying, but Pantalaimon suddenly wrenched the curtains closed, cutting off her line of vision.

“Pan! What’d you do that for?” complained Lyra.

He was holding the curtains shut tightly, his expression one of worry. “They looked right here, Lyra. Right at our window. Right at us. Like they knew where we were, like they were talking about us.”

Suddenly, the interest the woman’s son had been paying Lyra in the dining hall felt less amusing and more malicious. She had assumed he fancied her in the empty, idolizing way young boys often did, but maybe that wasn’t it at all. She worried then about every move she had ever made in his presence. Had he noticed that she left her wine untouched every night? That she turned down the expensive cognac often offered to her after dinner by important Scholars and politicians who thought offering Montjulien to a woman was the utmost expression of flattery and respect? Had he noticed her often full-plate in the earlier weeks of her pregnancy, when keeping anything down was difficult, when the smell of certain things she’d used to love made her stomach churn?

Worse—had he noticed Lyra wandering around the Jordan grounds these past few months, hand-in-hand with Will? Had he noticed them kissing beneath the tree in the Library Gardens as they so often did? Had he noticed two shadows passing by Lyra’s illuminated windows at night on the days Will stayed?

She felt worried and sick with that worry. She moved away from the window, her heart pounding, her muscles already tensed to flee. She felt the instinct to grab her belongings and run, but she knew that was an overreaction. Pantalaimon paced the floor, thinking hard, his paws making marks against the expensive carpet with the pressure of his heavy, stressed steps.

“I’m going to go down there,” he decided. Lyra’s heart lurched.

“No, don’t do that,” she argued at once, reaching for her dæmon. He had often gone off to spy for her when they were younger and felt they could get away with it; it was one of the many benefits of having a dæmon so like a witch’s. But she was terrified to have him far from her right now. What if they saw him or caught him? Her Pantalaimon. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to save him. There would be no hope of her staying put safely if she thought he was in danger.

“We need to know what she’s telling them, what they’re saying,” Pan insisted. “I’ll stay out of sight. They don’t know I can go far from you. They won’t be looking for me.”

“But their dæmons might see you. The woman’s is an eagle—they’ve got brilliant eyesight. I don’t want you to go, Pan, please don’t. _Please_.”

How odd it felt to be on this end of their dynamic, to be the one pleading with him not to be reckless, to be the one worried and desperate to hold him in place. She felt abruptly ashamed of all the stress she’d put him through.

“Now who’s a coward,” Pan said. Lyra didn’t even have it in her to insult him back. “I’ll be back. This is the best thing to do, you know it is. We need to know what they know so we’ll know if we need to leave sooner than we planned. I’ll go out the sitting room window and come back in the same way; leave it up just enough for me to squeeze in.”

She was not happy about this plan, but she knew he was right. They had to know what these clergymen were up to. So she followed him into the sitting room, let the window up just enough for him to squeeze through, and watched her heart’s companion run off into the sunlight without her.

She didn’t know how long she waited. She only knew that waiting was excruciating. She paced and did nothing else. Finally, when she was beginning to feel real, genuine panic take over, she heard Pan’s claws against the windowsill. She rushed over and let the window up a bit more. He scampered back in and fell to the floor. Lyra slammed the window shut after him, locked it, and sank to the floor to pull him into her arms. She pressed her face into his fur and felt his heart pounding away against hers.

“I was so worried, I hated that so much, I _hated it_ ,” she murmured tearfully.

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” he reassured her. “They didn’t see me at all. But it’s not good news, Lyra. Did you know the Consistorial Court of Discipline is running again?”

Lyra froze. Her words were hardly audible. “ _What?_ ”

“They were wearing a badge I’ve never seen before—navy and a dark sort of yellow—that said _CCD_ on it. And it gets worse. They know—or they suspect, anyway. About the baby. The woman’s son has been watching over you. She’s very active within the Church. He’s been taking note of everything and he’s noticed all sorts of changes in our behavior. Their next step is getting access to the Jordan doctor’s records. They think he knows that you’re pregnant and they’re searching for solid confirmation before they interrogate us.”

Lyra had never been so glad of her decade-long avoidance of the doctor than she was right then. They could search the Jordan records for weeks and they’d never find any evidence that she was pregnant, because she had her _own_ doctor to see, and he would _never_ tell anyone a thing.

“Well, they won’t find anything, so let them look away,” Lyra decided. She began to relax. Pantalaimon, however, was still tense in her arms.

“He told them we’ve been seen around with a boy missing two fingers. Kissing under trees, sneaking in and out of your room in the dead of night. He told them Will’s living here with us half the time. The woman didn’t seem to have any idea who Will might be, but one of the CCD men did. His dæmon’s head snapped to look at the woman the second she mentioned Will.”

Her sickness returned. Pantalaimon wasn’t done.

“Lyra, they must’ve had reason to suspect that this might happen to already be on the lookout for signs of it, signs that you’re pregnant. How long have they been watching? How long have they been waiting? More importantly… _why_ did they think you might get pregnant? Why would they care? What do they know that we don’t?” he wondered.

Lyra shook her head. “I don’t know. I need my alethiometer. Did they say if they were going to come here to speak with me?”

“Not tonight. They told the woman to continue watching. She’ll be back next week to get more information from her son.”

“Okay,” Lyra decided. Her heart was pounding again. “Then we shall be gone by next week.”

She left to get her alethiometer from underneath her pillow before she could really think about that decision. She didn’t want to become afraid or upset because then it would be even harder to make sense of the alethiometer. She sat in the center of her bed and obsessed over the symbols. She asked question after question, trying to make sense of what the Church knew that she didn’t, trying to figure out what they had planned for her. She got some half-answers, some full answers, and some answers she couldn’t make sense of in the slightest. All were terrible, the sort of terrible that Lyra’s mind rejected in order to shield itself.

When Will returned and sat beside her, she was feeling a bit panicky. She sat in her alethiometer-daze, still winding the hands, as Pantalaimon updated Will on everything that had happened in his absence.

Her hands were shaking so hard she could hardly twist the wheels anymore as Will reached over and took her hands in his. He held them tightly.  

“Lyra.”

She tore her eyes from the alethiometer and looked up at Will. Her mind was still spinning with all the different levels of horrific understanding and she felt detached because of it. It took him leaning in to kiss her twice before she seemed to shudder and return; she leaned in and hid in his embrace soon after.

“They’re not going to do anything to you,” he whispered.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“They’re planning all sorts of things, Will, really awful—horrible—despicable things.” Her voice broke off near the end of her words. Her eyes burned. She realized then how scared she really was. The things that alethiometer revealed to her had been so horrifying that her mind had held them at bay, as if protecting her from them, but now she knew there was no doubt what it had told her, no doubt what the Church intended to do if it found out she really _was_ pregnant with Will’s baby. And it was enough to make her hysterical. “They aren’t going to let me have this baby. And even if I do, they’re not going to let it live.”

“That’s not their decision to make! They aren’t going to _touch you_ ,” he repeated again, severe, almost angry.

She was crying now. The terrible things that had been revealed to her were hitting her fully. They were so horrible she couldn’t speak of them, so disturbing she couldn’t even tell Pantalaimon, though he had certainly sensed the gist of it through her feelings of revulsion and terror. She felt violated and sick.

“Lyra, look at me,” said Will, and she did.

His eyes were wild, fierce, and had he been a stranger, she might have felt terrified of him. He looked at her seriously, not a trace of wavering in his resolve, and said: “They are _not_ going to _ever_ touch you.” To his right, Kirjava hissed—an angry, hair-raising sound—as if backing up his words. “I need to know you believe me. I need to know you understand. I will not _ever_ let them touch you.”

But _he_ didn’t understand. This wasn’t in his control.

“You’re not here all the time, Will,” she reminded him, and it broke both their hearts as she did. “They have all these plans, some of them are so…I never knew people could…” she trailed off and shivered. She felt genuinely traumatized by what the alethiometer had shown her and it hadn’t even happened yet. “And they have other plans, too, Will—things I think they’re going to try first—the alethiometer said right now they’re thinking of poisoning me with oil from an herb that will make the baby come early, and if it comes now, it won’t live, and I won’t either. The alethiometer was sure of that.”

What she didn’t tell him were the details the alethiometer had revealed to her, about the fact that she would shake with fever and bleed their baby out on her bed and die in excruciating pain. And that hadn’t even been the most terrible of the Church’s plans. In fact, if she were going to die, that would have been the kindest way.

“That won’t happen—”

“And how can I stop that? It would be so easy for somebody to poison me, Will. And I have to eat—”

“I’ll bring you food here. I’ll make it myself. You just won’t accept any food or drink from anybody here and—”

“And what exactly am I meant to do when you’re gone for another week?”

“I won’t be. It won’t happen. I’m going to take time off, and if they won’t let me, I’ll quit.”

She was bothered by this. “You can’t quit your job, Will. You help so many people and you love it and you worked so hard to get there—”

“I’ll have to eventually anyway. Once we find each other, I can’t very well just disappear into your world for months at a time and not show up for work.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but he shook his head, his eyes hard with concern and seriousness. “This isn’t important right now, Lyra. We can argue about my job another time. What’s important is _you_ and I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep you safe—this I promise you.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe _him_ or trust _him_. It was just that she knew the true history of the Consistorial Court of Discipline. She knew what they were capable of. He didn’t. And if they had regained enough power in society to restart the CCD without public outrage…well, that was a very bad sign for Lyra.

“I have to leave.” The words sounded numb as they fell from her lips. “As soon as possible. Tomorrow, if I can.”

He seemed to think this was rash. He pointed out things she logically knew—that they weren’t ready yet, that they didn’t have everything they needed, that she still hadn’t secured safe passage with the Gyptians and therefore had no reliable way to even _get_ to Iorek—but it did little to shake her resolve. She had seen what would happen if she stayed within the CCD’s reach. She couldn’t let them get their hands on her. Of this she was certain.

“How will you get to the north?”

“I’ll get my own boat. I’ll use the last of my money.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll barter if I need anything else.”

“No—I mean what comes next? Do you know how to sail?”

She didn’t. “In theory, a bit.”

“Do you know how to navigate?”

“Better than I know how to sail.”

“You don’t have food stocked up, or proper outerwear for the north, or—”

“I’ll have to get these things as I go. Some you can bring for me.”

“I don’t like this, Lyra.”

“And you think I do? You think I want to be chased out of my own home? Out of _Jordan_?” Her voice had hardly risen above a whisper, but it seemed to hit him like a slap. At once, his disapproval melted. His face softened with sorrow. He opened his arms and Lyra leaned into him.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his hand smoothing her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

She wasn’t really sure what he was sorry for. “ _You_ en’t got any reason to be sorry. You’ve done nothing to apologize for. Nothing. It’s _them_ —the Church, the CCD, _them_.” She leaned back and looked up at him. She could feel her tears drying against her face; her skin felt tight. “If I thought there was another way, don’t you know I’d choose it? I’m not trying to be reckless. But Will…you didn’t see what I saw. And I don’t…I don’t even want to tell you what the alethiometer said they were planning to do…I don’t even want to _think_ about it.”

He reached up and wiped the drying tears from her cheeks. He admitted something she had already known. “I’m frightened.”

She held him tighter.

“We’ll need to make a list of all the things I need to get tonight,” he decided. “I’ll get them first thing tomorrow and bring them back here. We’ll need to get everything you’ve already got packed and sorted and ready to go so we can leave as soon as I arrive.”

She was relieved that he was taking her seriously. She nodded at once. “I will. And I’ll…I’ll figure out how I’m getting to the north. There’s got to be a way.”

This was Will’s main concern; she could see it in the way his lips twisted unhappily. It was her main concern, too.

They worked well into the night. They made a massive list of everything they would need—both for her initial journey to the North and once she was there—and then Will helped her sort through and pack the things she already had. Choosing what to take with her was the hardest part. She didn’t know what would happen to her room in her absence. Would the Master protect her belongings? Or would the CCD ransack it?

In the end, she had the most important things already: herself, Pan, and her alethiometer. But she decided to pack her alethiometry books, sentimental letters, documents, and photograms, and a few of her more sensible odds and ends, like a compact silver stationary kit given to her by Dame Hannah upon completion of her dissertation and a bloodstone-encrusted penknife she’d been given by the manager of her mother’s estate. She had two other things of great sentimental value, but she had those at all times: they were the two rings she always wore (one made of three different types of metal, the delicate ring hand-twisted and crafted by Iorek Byrnison himself, and the second a thin, worn gold band set with moonstones, carnelian, and peridot.) She had been given the second ring first; Serafina had left it with her on her sixteenth birthday. The first had come later on. She had been on a visit to Svalbard and had spent an evening in the forging room with Iorek. The ring was made from scraps of metal that had been carelessly discarded. After Lyra passively expressed fondness for the way the light shone on the different-colored metals, Iorek lifted the metal up and twisted and melded the scraps together effortlessly into a piece of jewelry anybody would have been pleased to own. Both rings were very dear to her.

Will had to go back to his own world to rest before he woke to go on his purchasing spree, leaving Lyra alone to pack the last of her belongings. She spent time and care packing her books into the large rolling bag Will had brought for her last week, ensuring they didn’t take up more space than they had to. She tucked her mother’s penknife into the waterproof bag she had clipped at her waist; it was already holding her alethiometer, in case she had to flee suddenly in the night. She packed her stationary kit on top of her books, tucked her important documents into a waterproof pouch before sticking that pouch into the front pocket of her rolling bag, and then she began the process of sorting through her letters. She had saved many throughout the years. She took a moment to look over all the letters she’d gotten from Will’s mum so far—six now—with fondness. She very nearly opened them all up again to reread them because Mrs. Parry had a way of making her feel comforted and reassured in her letters, but she knew they were short on time. She tucked them carefully into a hidden pocket inside the rolling bag. She added the letters she’d saved from Iorek, Farder Coram, Dame Hannah, Serafina, Billy Costa, and some of her more favorite Scholars. She had just reached a letter from Dr. Polstead, one he’d written to her in response to a letter she’d sent regarding a question about her dissertation, when she paused. She stared down at her name on the outside of the envelope, something tugging at her mind like there was a memory she had once had but had presently forgotten.

Pantalaimon, who had been sorting her clothes into _take_ and _don’t take_ piles, sensed her unease. He leapt over to her and set his paws on her lap.

“What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. She opened the envelope and pulled out Dr. Polstead’s letter.

_Wednesday 3 rd January_

_Dear Lyra,_

_You are never a bother and should you need any further assistance in the future, do not hesitate to write or visit me. I remember my first dissertation well; I would have been quite lost without those few notable, helpful Scholars who provided advice and suggestion._

_Your instincts on this matter are correct: you should provide the printed material and/or cuttings that cannot otherwise be found to the examiners for them to peruse. I have included a particularly helpful document on how to properly cite different types of sources (I’ve circled the section dealing with obscure, printed materials.) If you cite them according to this document and then provide the actual materials themselves, I feel this will be more than suffice for the examiners._

_I will be at sea from the 12 th to the 21st of this month, but if you need any further clarification or help, I can certainly meet with you before or after I return. _If _I return, that is: I’m trying my hand at sailing after nearly a lifetime of canoeing. I hope I shall survive the experience!_

_All my best  
Dr. Malcolm Polstead_

As soon as Lyra looked up from the letter, she and Pantalaimon locked eyes, both their expressions one of delight and surprise.

“Dr. Polstead—”

“He’s the one who told us all those stories about the CCD when we were younger—”

“He _hated_ them and he wasn’t even afraid to tell us that—”

“He’s never seen consorting with the Church—”

“He’s watched us grow up practically—”

“ _And_ he’s only a minute or so away,” Pantalaimon completed.

She and Pan held their gaze for a moment more, and then they both stood up. Lyra shoved her feet into the first pair of shoes she saw—her waterproof boots—and yanked a too-small quilted coat on over her dress. She hurried to the door, Pantalaimon flying ahead of her, and withdrew her penknife from the small bag around her waist before exiting. She held it tight in her hand the entire run to the Lodge Tower. Dr. Polstead lived in a room at the very top of the tower, only a few feet away from the trapdoor that led onto the rooftop Lyra frequented most often (and, in fact, had just been on the day prior with Will). She was terribly out of breath by the time she made it to the stairs, but she still took them two at a time, desperate to get to Dr. Polstead’s room.

She was panting by the time she saw the familiar oak door. She hit her fist against the wood hurriedly, her penknife still held in her other hand, Pantalaimon pacing the corridor behind her suspiciously, his eyes darting around to make sure they hadn’t been followed.

She was beginning to fear he wasn’t home, that he’d left on some sort of sabbatical without Lyra having heard word of it. But after what felt like an obscene amount of time (but was realistically probably only a minute or two), she heard movement from the other side of the door.

“Dr. Polstead, it’s Lyra,” she called loudly. Maybe he thought she was somebody dangerous (like the CCD?).

At once, she heard the slide of a lock, and Dr. Polstead opened the door. His ginger hair was disheveled and his usually-cheerful face was shadowed with worry.

“Hurry, hurry, come in at once,” he greeted her, and the urgency in his tone made Lyra quickly oblige.

She stepped into his warm room, Pantalaimon darting in after her. His cat dæmon, Asta, shut the door after Pantalaimon and jumped up onto a cabinet near the door to deftly slide the lock shut once more. Lyra faced Dr. Polstead. His young face looked significantly older right then.

“You shouldn’t be out of your room,” he told her, sounding remarkably like a father might in that moment. It baffled—and somewhat insulted—Lyra. He had never been stern with her—never. He was one of the only Scholars who’d never yelled at her, or given up on her, or lectured her needlessly.

“Why not?” she demanded, though she knew why, and he did, too. “I live here.”

“I know, but with the CCD roaming about, it’s safer to stay put at night. For everyone.” He seemed to finally register her disheveled appearance. His brow creased with confusion as he took in her waterproof boots (it wasn’t raining and hadn’t for days), her wrinkled, ill-fitting coat (it had been balled up on the floor of her wardrobe for ages), and her fist still clutched around the penknife. She supposed her expression probably resembled something haggard, too: she felt horrible. She didn’t know if it was the baby or the running she’d just done, but she felt lightheaded and nauseated again. “Is everything okay?”

Her instinct was to lie, but she didn’t have the luxury of that right now. She had to be honest because only the truth would earn her what she so desperately needed—his help. So she closed her penknife, tucked it back into the bag at her waist, and tried her hand at honesty.

“No,” she admitted. She shook her head. “It’s not okay. Do you know why the Consistorial Court is here?”

He regarded her carefully, his expression guarded. “I have an idea.” 

“Because of me.”

“Yes. That was generally my idea.”

Lyra nodded. This didn’t surprise her. All sorts of rumors about her had traveled around Jordan after her return from the war, and she hadn’t made her hatred of the Church quiet in recent years.

Her wooziness and nausea were growing. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment as she tried to work through the discomfort. Pantalaimon moved to her side nervously when she swayed gently on her feet.

“Lyra?” Dr. Polstead asked at once, his hand coming out to rest hesitantly on her shoulder to steady her.

“Let’s sit,” Pantalaimon suggested.

Lyra made it to the threadbare sofa only a few feet away and fell down upon it. She set her hands in her lap and breathed through her nausea with her eyes shut tight. Once she felt a little better, she opened her eyes, only to find Dr. Polstead right in front of her, holding a glass of water with a worried expression.

Lyra accepted it, but she didn’t drink it until Pantalaimon had sniffed at it and inspected its appearance. Once he deemed it safe, she drank nearly half of it at once, dehydrated from her run across the Jordan grounds.

Dr. Polstead joined her on the sofa. Lyra turned and looked at him.

This time she asked: “Do you know why the Consistorial Court is watching me?”

He frowned. “Why, I expect it has something to do with your Child Protection Board.”

Lyra’s heart beat harder in her chest. This was her moment to be truthful, but the truth felt so vulnerable. “No. It has to do with something else entirely.”

Dr. Polstead studied her expression. His light eyes seemed to be trying to glean some sort of clarity from her expression alone, but Lyra did her best to keep her face impassive. Pantalaimon, on the other hand, was nervously avoiding Asta’s equally-probing stare, probably to keep himself from blurting anything out.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” Dr. Polstead said finally. Lyra guessed he’d assumed her hesitation was fear. “Whatever it is, I won’t be cross. I won’t tell anyone. I’ve been on your side longer than you’ve _had_ a side to be on, Lyra. One day perhaps I’ll tell you more about that.”

She didn’t understand his comment at all, but now wasn’t the time. She thought and she hoped that she could trust him, but there was really no way to be certain without taking a leap, and really, she had no other choice. So she unbuttoned her too-tight coat—partially out of discomfort (it was getting unpleasantly warm) and partially out of hope he’d figure it out without her having to say anything—and she waited. She wasn’t hugely pregnant by any means, but the swell around her abdomen was distinctive enough, particularly in the dress she had on today.

She had assumed he was observant. She had assumed correctly.

She watched as his eyes widened slightly and his lips parted in surprise. But, being a gentleman, he didn’t say anything. He waited.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she said needlessly.

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed. He looked more gobsmacked than Lyra had when she’d found out. Asta moved closer to Pantalaimon, a comforting sort of _mew_ sounding from her as if she could sense his deep concern for Lyra.

“For all of this to make sense, I’m going to have to tell you the full story of what I was up to during the war, but I haven’t got time for that just now. I need you to trust that I will explain everything in due time. For now, this is what I can tell you: there was a prophecy made about me when I was a baby. I believed that prophecy had been fulfilled when I was twelve-years-old, but it’s possible that there was more to it that I wasn’t aware of. Maybe _nobody_ was aware of it ‘til now—I don’t know. The baby’s father…” Lyra trailed off. Where to begin? How could she explain such a complicated story in such little time? “He was involved with the war, too. I think the Church believes he was involved more than he was, but he was involved, as was I. But the Church believes— either because of who the father is and who I am, or maybe because of a part of the prophecy I never knew of before— that this baby is a threat. And they’re willing to do whatever they have to do to keep me from having it.”

He still looked shocked to his core. “Lyra…”

She continued on. She didn’t have time to wait for him to process all this; she could use this time to explain more. “So I have to leave here. I’m being watched by the CCD; I know that for a fact. I know through my alethiometer what they have planned for me, and I don’t intend on letting those plans become a reality. I’ve set up a safe place in Svalbard with Iorek Byrnison, my dear friend, but on such little notice, I have no safe way to get there. I can’t trust anyone. And so I wondered…I thought…well, I remembered that _you_ can sail…and I wondered…”

She stopped, feeling abruptly guilty, and selfish, and bashful. Who was she to ask this of him?

But he nodded as if what she was asking of him was the most natural thing in the world, like risking his life to take her via boat somewhere was a routine part of his life.

“Will I take you there?” he voiced the question for her. She nodded once, her mouth set in a firm line. Then, to her surprise, he smiled his usual warm smile. “Yes. I will.”

It couldn’t possibly be that easy.

“You’ll be risking your life,” Lyra reminded him softly.

He nodded. “I know.”

“It will be a long journey. Two weeks, maybe more. And it will be terribly cold.”

“I know that, too.”

“If the CCD finds out…”

“I know. I know all of this better than you can imagine. And I’m still saying yes.”

Lyra shook her head. “ _Why_? Don’t get me wrong, we’re very grateful, Pan and I are, but I thought you’d be difficult to convince.”

He smiled again. “Not me. If you need my help, Lyra, my help is what you’ll get. Always.”

She didn’t feel she deserved his devotion, but she was breathlessly thankful for it. She reached out and set her hand atop his.

“And we can leave in the morning?”

He patted the back of her hand. “Yes. I keep my boat near the Gyptian docks. It’s nothing grand, now—it’s a simple sailboat—but I’ve made it as far north as Sveden before. Never farther than that, but if you need to get to Svalbard, I’ll get you to Svalbard.”

“What time can we go?” she asked at once.

“What time _must_ we go?” he countered.

Lyra considered that. “By midday. The baby’s father will be accompanying me for part of the journey; he should be ready by then.”

Dr. Polstead nodded knowingly. “Ah, yes, the dark-haired man with the multi-colored cat dæmon. Correct?”

Lyra hid her surprise. “How did you know that?”

“You two have traipsed past my room headed onto that roof quite a number of times already,” he reminded her. Lyra at least had the decorum to blush. No telling what they’d been overheard saying as they moved to and fro.

“Right,” she said, somewhat embarrassed.

Dr. Polstead frowned. “What’s the Church want with him?”

“He’s…he had something very important during the war, something…dangerous to the Church. Something my f—Lord Asriel wanted and needed. I believe they think Will used it for its intended purpose. Either way, they think he’s dangerous, and I guess they also think he fulfills some part of whichever prophecy they know of that I don’t.”

She and Will had decided that it didn’t matter—this supposed prophecy about their child—but right then Lyra would have given any amount of money to hear it. She felt it was only an advantage to know what your enemy knew (and more).

“If he was helping you, he’s a friend of mine,” Dr. Polstead declared loyally. Lyra smiled despite herself. She had often found him too friendly in her teenage years when she was fond of moping about in peace and quiet with only Pan; he had interrupted quite a number of her quiet afternoons with exuberant small chat that Lyra had no interest in being part of. He had even once interrupted her while she was on her and Will’s bench. She hadn’t been so polite that time, though every other time she was polite and kind back to him. He treated her like a long-lost friend, or maybe even a younger cousin, and Lyra had never determined whether he just treated _her_ that way or whether he was that way with everyone.

“I will come to you at midday. We will make the journey to the docks together,” Dr. Polstead declared. He glanced over at his dæmon. “Asta, the inventory?”

His dæmon had been curled almost protectively in front of Pantalaimon on the sofa. She responded to Dr. Polstead’s vague question—or maybe reminder?—by standing up on the sofa cushions and arching her back in a stretch. She didn’t seem in any particular hurry, but she padded across the sitting room towards a large, heavy trunk placed underneath the far window anyway.

It was time for Lyra to return home. She had things to finish doing and she probably needed to get at least a couple hours of sleep. Before she left, she hovered by the door.

“Dr. Polstead?”

He smiled at her. “Malcolm.”

It felt very strange to call a Jordan Scholar—one who had once taught her, in fact—by his given name. She tried it out cautiously, certain she’d go back to _Dr. Polstead_ if it didn’t feel right. “Malcolm.”

He waited, his calm, happy smile still in place. If he realized how dangerous this was, it didn’t show. She wanted to remind him again, just because his cheerfulness made her fear he really _didn’t_ know what he was getting himself into, but he knew far more about the CCD than she did, and anyway, he was at least a decade older than her, with more degrees, and with more experience.

“Thank you,” she said instead.

The way his eyes softened surprised her. He looked at her as if he cared greatly for her, and Lyra hadn’t realized she’d made that big of an impression during the six weeks he’d struggled to teach her philosophy. She’d thought she’d been a very unfavorable pupil.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

Lyra left his room with Pan in tow. They didn’t run back this time—Lyra didn’t feel up to it—but they were aware of every shadow that passed by them, and she didn't unfurl her fingers from the bloodstone-encrusted handle of the penknife until she was safely home.

* * *

 

She got very little sleep that night. She was slumped over a cup of tea at the crowded table in her sitting room when she heard an urgent knock on her door. Being only half-past six that morning, she knew it wasn’t yet Dr. Polstead. She and Pantalaimon froze in fear.

“Lyra? Lyra, open up,” the Master said.

And then: “Lyra—it’s Hannah.”

Lyra rose to her feet at once. She quickly tied her dressing gown shut and hurried to her door. Pantalaimon peeked out the window, and once he nodded at her, she opened it up enough to allow the Master and Hannah Relf to squeeze inside. She bolted the door after them. When she turned around to face them, they both looked crestfallen and ashen.

“What?” she demanded.

Dame Hannah and the Master exchanged a quick look. Lyra didn’t miss it.

“It’s true, then,” Dame Hannah said, her eyes scanning scrupulously down Lyra’s form. She was wearing only a thin nightie and her dressing gown, and without the care taken to conceal herself, her situation was as plain to them as it’d been to Dr. Polstead.

Lyra didn’t respond, but she crossed her arms over her middle. She glanced to the Master. He was kneading over his brow wearily like he had often done when Lyra was an exasperating child.

“I don’t know why I’m particularly _shocked_ ,” the Master finally muttered, more to himself than to them. “You have _always_ resisted safe harbor and protection. Ever since you were a girl. Time and time again we tried to keep you safe, and time and time again you wandered quite happily into danger nonetheless.” He sighed. “Well—I’ll admit this is unchartered territory for you, at any rate. Shocking to find one of those left. But, as it stands: present danger and Lyra will find it.”

Lyra bristled at his tone. She scowled unhappily. As if she had known that the Church would threaten her life if she got pregnant! As if she’d meant to get pregnant in the first place! Dame Hannah—who knew Lyra’s scowls like the back of her own hand—interceded before Lyra could snap back.

“We have some things we must tell you and I’m afraid they are far from pleasant,” Dame Hannah said.

Lyra dropped her arms from her middle. “I doubt it’s anything I don’t already know. I know the CCD has reorganized. I know they’re after me. I suspect very strongly that it has something to do with my baby.”

Neither the Master nor Dame Hannah looked surprised to find Lyra a few steps ahead of them, and why would they? She was easily the most accomplished alethiometrist alive.

“You suspect correctly,” affirmed Dame Hannah, her tone dark. “Our spies report that the Church heard, around eight years ago now, of another prophecy, though he was not sure whether this prophecy was revealed at the same time as the first or sometime thereafter. This prophecy directly named you and centered around a child you would come to have with somebody who was referred to as a _god destroyer._ Our spy does not know precisely what this prophecy dictates this child will come to do, but whatever it is, the Church is certain that it must not ever happen.”

None of this was news to Lyra. It was just as she had thought.

“I know what they’re planning to do with me,” she told Dame Hannah. “I asked my alethiometer. I know. They mean to kill me and they mean to kill the child before it’s even born.”

Dame Hannah looked troubled. Her marmoset dæmon made a whining sort of noise and reached out for Pantalaimon, as if to shield him, giving away whatever feelings Dame Hannah might have been trying to hide. Lyra stood taller.

“But they’re not going to get what they want because I’m leaving at midday.”

 _This_ appeared to shock both the Master and Dame Hannah.

“Leaving? What do you mean?” The Master asked.

“I’m traveling to New Denmark to stay until the baby is born and maybe a bit after, depending,” she lied smoothly. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them; it was just that it was for their own good (and hers) if very few people knew where she was truly headed.

“New Denmark? Well, who are you staying with? Who are you going with? Are you traveling alone?” worried Dame Hannah.

“I’ll be with the father of my child,” said Lyra, and she heard the inadvertent pride in her voice as she spoke of Will, for she was certain there was no better traveling companion in her world or any other.

“And who exactly is that? Why is he called the _god destroyer_?” the Master pressed.

Dame Hannah looked as if she already knew who it was. Lyra had told both the Master and Dame Hannah the true, unedited story of her time during the war, so when she said “Will”, they both knew very well who she meant, and all of it seemed to make sense to them.

“But I thought you two were separated?” the Master said. Then he muttered something else to himself: “That must be why the Church wasn’t worried initially. They must have thought that particular prophecy could never come to light with the boy gone forever…”

Lyra didn’t know why, but she knew she wasn’t meant to tell them the full story about the open door between her world or his, or his gift of travel, or any of the sort. So she said: “We figured out a way to see each other.”

“But how—”

“I won’t say anymore.”

They still looked concerned. “But how are you getting where you’re going? You can’t just board a cruise ship and hope you aren’t being followed onboard by agents of the Church,” Dame Hannah pointed out.

Lyra decided it was probably safe to tell them _who_ she was going with as they’d notice his absence, anyway. “Dr. Polstead is going to take me. In his boat.”

At once, all the concern and apprehension on Dame Hannah’s wrinkled face eased. It was as if Lyra had told Dame Hannah she was taking her own personal army to protect her. It was clear Dame Hannah knew Dr. Polstead— _Malcolm_ , she corrected herself; that would take time to get used to—but Lyra had no idea how or what Malcolm could have ever done to make himself as trustworthy in Dame Hannah’s eyes as he clearly was.

“With Malcolm?” Dame Hannah clarified.

Lyra nodded. She watched with interest as a smile came up on Dame Hannah’s face. She took a step closer; her aged hands were firm and steady as she set them on Lyra’s shoulders.

“If you’re leaving, we’ll cover your tracks,” she promised Lyra. “Yours and Malcolm’s. I can say you went off to do research for your doctorate and that he was helping you. I’ll forge the necessary paperwork before you leave. The Master can back the story up here, for Malcolm. Right?”

She glanced over at the Master. He nodded at once.  

It was as good an idea as any. It was unlikely the Church would believe it, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a cover story.

“All right. Yeah, that’d be good,” Lyra agreed. “Say I went…” here she faltered. Should she tell them she went to the north? It fit in with her MPhil research topic, and if they thought she was lying where she said she’d be would be the last place they’d check. But then again, maybe Dame Hannah would do such a good job forging artifacts that they’d believe it, and then she’d have led them right to her, and to Will, and to their baby…

“Tell them I went to Texas,” Lyra decided. She would’ve liked the time to confer with her alethiometer, but if they were to forge documentation before she left, they’d need every possible second at their disposal. “I’m researching…” she looked off to the corner of the room as she thought. She twisted her ring around her finger as she did. It came to her at once. “The economic impacts of gemstone mining-- with a particular focus on garnet—on rural, south Texas communities still reeling from the financial crisis of ‘08.”

Dame Hannah laughed. “Sounds dull. Perfect.”

Dame Hannah promised Lyra she’d head straight to St. Sophia’s and begin covering her tracks. Before they left, the Master did something he rarely ever did and hugged Lyra. It was awkward and only last a few seconds, but it had surprised Lyra enough to render her momentarily speechless. The fact that she had no idea when—or if—she’d ever return to Jordan College hit her full force. She felt homesick before she’d even left home.

And after over twenty years of forcing Lyra to attend lessons, of stressing the utmost importance of academia, of insisting studying was the way to freedom, the Master left her with this advice: “Trust your gut. Trust yourself.”

He was gone after that. And so, in a way, was Jordan.

* * *

 

Will would have never woken his mother so early on purpose.

He had meant to tiptoe into their kitchen, leave Lyra’s most recent letter for his mum, and leave his own note for Mary, but he hadn’t expected that his mum would be dozing at the table. The hot mug of tea to the left of her told Will she’d gotten up recently and come to the kitchen. Her head was resting in her hand and she looked to be half-asleep and half-awake. Will leaned over her worriedly and set a hand on her shoulder.

“Mum?” he whispered.

She jolted. She very nearly hit her elbow against the scalding mug. Will reached out and snatched it up by the rim just in time, but it was so quick that some sloshed out and scalded his palm. He winced and moved the mug over to the other side of the table.

“Will? What’s wrong?” asked his mum, her sleepy voice drenched with unease. “Is Lyra okay?”

Will shook his scalded hand gently as he sat down beside his mum. He set his un-injured hand over hers on the table. She flipped her hand over and held his, her dark eyes anxious. He dredged up a smile (he thought about how excited Lyra had been to hear the baby’s heartbeat, how full and proud he had felt at the sound of it) and offered it to her.

“Lyra’s okay. She’s sent another letter, here you go,” he slid the letter across the table. His mum and Lyra were building up quite the collection of letters. Will sometimes felt intense curiosity at what they talked about and longed to read them, but he had never done so, and never would unless explicitly asked to by both of them. Whatever they talked about, it appeared to be comforting for both of them. His mum looked forward to the letters enough to pester him if he forgot to give her one straightaway, and she asked after Lyra quite often with a maternal sort of concern that Lyra had probably never known before. Lyra seemed genuinely excited for each letter Will brought for her and he had caught her rereading some on occasion. She had told him that his mother was ‘kind, brave, and wise’, things Will had already known, of course, but it meant a lot to know she also saw those things in Elaine Parry. It meant a lot to know that they liked each other—cared for each other, even—and that his mum was providing comfort to Lyra during this strange journey they were currently on. And it must have been strange to his mum to know that Will’s dad had met Lyra before she had, that there was this girl that had been a part of both her husband and her son’s lives—a girl that was about to make her a grandmother, even—and she had still never met her in person. It was all very convoluted. It was a wonder his mum didn’t backslide again. It was a wonder she believed him. But then again, she’d always known her husband was involved with something otherworldly, and hadn’t she always told Will he’d take up his father’s mantel? He supposed he’d done that and then some.

“You’re here early. You’re sure everything’s okay?” his mum pressed.

“Things aren’t necessarily okay,” admitted Will, and for the next few minutes, he explained the gist of what was happening with the Church in Lyra’s world. “So she has to leave where she’s at. But we don’t know who we can trust, or how she’s going to get where she’s going, and she’s got to go to the north—very far north—and I’m worried.”

His mum was worried, too. She shook her head. “No, she shouldn’t be doing all that now, it’s not safe.”

“We don’t have much choice. If I could bring her here, Mum, I would—”

“Let’s do that. She can stay here, with me and with Mary and with you. We won’t let anybody hurt her—”

He couldn’t let his mum finish that idea. It hurt too much to even entertain the hypothetical idea. That’s what he wanted to do, but it was impossible. “She can’t stay here, Mum. We’ve no way to get her here.”

“Can’t she do what you’re doing?”

“No. I mean…I don’t even know how _I_ can do what I’m doing. And she’s...she’s got a baby in her. I don’t think she could just leave her body elsewhere.”

His mum saw his point. She frowned so hard that the lines on her forehead deepened. “And she’s going alone?” The thought seemed to fill her with a deep sadness. Will felt a swell of something similar.

“Not alone because I’ll be there as much as I can be.” It was going to be difficult and dangerous for him. He was planning on trying to be there for at least most the day every day. He wasn’t used to leaving his body for that long or that frequently, which was why he’d gone to leave a note for Mary, asking if he could stay here so he could be monitored.

His mum was thinking something similar. “Is that safe for you?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But it’s going to have to be.” He stood from the table. “I have to go buy quite a number of things for Lyra’s journey. Can you make sure Mary gets this note when she wakes?”

His mum shook her head. “Mary’s not here. She woke early to go into the lab. That’s why I’m up.”

Will frowned. “Oh. Well, do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Lunchtime, I expect.”

Wills’ heart sank. He grabbed the note he’d set on the table. “I’ll have to go by the lab while I’m out, then.”

His mum stood. “I’ll come with you and help you with your purchases.”

He could use the help, and anyway, he could tell there would be no dissuading her. So he tidied the kitchen while she dressed quickly and then they made their way systematically through Oxford, hitting shops as they opened and buying things with no regard for the price tag, only for the quality and how easy they would be to transport. Will quickly blew through all the money currently in his account, sooner than he’d expected, but he didn’t comment on it, and neither did his mum. They moved onto the next shop using a credit card without a word. Will still had money in his savings, and he would transfer that over later, but as of right now, nothing was more important or pressing than this.

He bought survival items he hadn’t gotten on his last haul: three lightweight lamps that would provide light for thirty days each on only one set of batteries, a compact but high-quality fire-starting kit, a double sleeping bag ranked for the coldest of possible temperatures, a tent so light Will had to check the bag twice to make sure it was actually in there, loads of packable, non-perishable food items, and—most importantly—a bottle that would purify water from even the most questionable of water sources. He bought himself a knife similar in size to the subtle knife, though ordinary and dull in comparison, and one set of quality outerwear ranked for subzero temperatures, as well as a new pair of hiking boots and some warm socks. He knew Lyra put a lot of stock in her northern shops’ ‘furs’, but he bought her quite a few coats, parkas, and other winter outerwear from his world (with his mum’s help in estimating what size she’d need to accommodate her for the entire pregnancy). He also bought her thermal undergarments; if she got cold enough, he was certain she’d permit the trousers underneath her dresses.

Finding items for the baby was the hardest part. He knew they wouldn’t be able to leave the heated cottage once the baby was born, but he was ever-aware of the fact that they might have to. He had no idea what sort of items would keep a baby warm enough to keep it healthy in temperatures like that. In the end, he bought every blanket that boasted about withstanding even the coldest of temperatures. In a baby shop they went into, he had his mum pick out anything that would keep a baby warm, and he bought a travel cot that reminded him of a cocoon (the priciest item yet).

Their last stop was a maternity shop. Here, Will was frank with the shopgirl, telling her that his girlfriend was pregnant and they were looking for clothes that would last her ‘til the end of the pregnancy that were warm and comfortable—and _not trousers_. He bought anything and everything she handed him. He left the shop with a number of wool skirts and jumper-like tops, as well as undergarments his mum and the shop lady had insisted would be practical and useful, feeling like he’d done a decent enough job in the short amount of time he’d had.

They went to Mary’s lab after their shopping was completed. Will didn’t have much time to explain, but he did his best, and once Mary promised she’d keep an eye on him, he headed back to his mum’s house. He texted his supervisor and fabricated a family emergency. He said he didn’t know when he’d be back to work, because that was the truth, and he apologized.

With Kirjava on his chest and his hands closed around all his shopping bags, he let his mind float up and away. He stepped solidly into Lyra’s sitting room quicker than he ever had before. He dropped the bags to the floor and spun around, searching and worrying—but there was no need to worry. Lyra hurdled herself into his arms before he even had to call her name. At their feet, their dæmons were kissing and nuzzling each other in relief, and Will felt just as breathlessly thankful. They began speaking at the same moment.

“I got the things on the list—”

“I found a way to get north—”

They both stopped. Will leaned back and looked down at her.

“You first,” he said urgently. “You got in touch with the Gyptians?”

Lyra shook her head. “No. But I remembered one of my scholars is a sailor. I went to him late last night and asked if he would take us. And he said that he would. We’re leaving in an hour.”

Will was torn between horror at the fact that she’d wandered out into the night alone and relief that she’d found (presumably) safe passage. He chose the latter.

“Thank God.”

“No,” argued Lyra, shaking her head. “Thank Dr. Malcolm Polstead. He’s the one getting us to the north.”

“Fair,” Will agreed, and then he had to laugh, and she laughed with him.

They spent the next half-hour quickly sorting and packing the things Will had bought that morning. Once everything was packed and their coats and shoes were on, they had nothing to do but wait. Will curled up on the sofa with Lyra and their dæmons and tried to let the honey-sweet smell of her hair calm him. He stroked her hip idly while she conferred with her alethiometer, her eyes a million miles away. Pantalaimon lazed on top of Lyra’s stomach as Kirjava lovingly groomed his fur, absorbed in her task as if it were crucial to Pantalaimon’s wellbeing. Will had just leaned in and kissed Lyra’s temple when she shuddered and fell out of her trance.

“Sorry,” Will said at once, assuming it’d been his fault she lost her focus.

“No, I only just realized—Will—I could ask my alethiometer whether we’re having a son or a daughter! I think it would tell me _that._ Should I?”

“Oh,” he said. He blinked. He hadn’t expected the question. “Oh, I don’t know.”

She set her fingers tentatively on the tiny wheels that moved the slender hands of the alethiometer. She bit her lip. “I think…yeah, I know how to frame the question.” She looked directly at Will. Her blue eyes seemed softer than they had a few moments ago when she’d been intently staring at her alethiometer. “Do you want to know?”

 _Did_ he?

“I don’t suppose it changes anything one way or another, does it?”

“No, not at all,” agreed Lyra. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. “It just might be nice to know.”

It might feel more real if they knew, and for that reason alone, he was inclined to tell her to ask. But before she could, there was a quick knock on the door, followed soon after by a deep male voice saying: “Lyra? It’s Malcolm.”

Lyra hastily shoved her alethiometer down into the bag at her waist. Will was up and across the room in only a few long strides. Kirjava peeked out the window; she was joined by Pan a second later.

“That’s him,” Pantalaimon told Will.

Will opened the door at once. Malcolm hurried in. His dæmon—a cat like Will’s, though much smaller than Kirjava, and ginger-colored—was nervously staring back behind them like she thought they were being followed. Will bolted the door as soon as Malcolm was inside.

The ginger cat dæmon greeted Kirjava at once by rubbing her side along Kirjava’s. Kirjava was shocked by the immediate affectionate greeting; Will felt the same thrill of surprise and confusion that she felt. She had met so few dæmons in her lifetime and hadn’t ever touched any but Pantalaimon. She looked curiously at Will, as if unsure whether this was appropriate dæmon behavior, and then she looked at Pantalaimon. Pan stepped in to mediate, and as soon as he’d introduced the two dæmons to one another, Kirjava bumped her head kindly against the ginger cat’s.

Meanwhile, the man, Malcolm, extended his hand for Will to shake. Their handshake was firm and warm.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Polstead—Malcolm,” he greeted. He was still shaking Will’s hand. “You must be the father of Lyra’s baby.”

Will felt his heart jolt madly. The back of his neck burned. Being addressed that way had filled him with an electric sort of delight that both embarrassed and surprised him; he had never thought of himself that way, but that’s something that he was now, wasn’t it? The father of her child (Lyra’s child, his child, _their child.)_ From now on, that would be as much a part of his identity as _John Parry’s son_ or _doctor_ or _Lyra’s lover_.

“I am,” said Will finally, and he found his voice was bursting with pride. “My name is Will. Will Parry.”

Malcom was smiling. He finally dropped Will’s hand. “Great to meet you, Will. I only wish it could have been under better circumstances for you both.”

“Me too,” agreed Will. He flashed his eyes over towards Lyra; she was standing with her back to them, messing with the rolling bag they’d packed everything up in, and for a moment, the sight of her made Will’s throat close with emotion. He couldn’t have said why. Maybe it was because they were about to head off into the dangerous unknown, and he was dreadfully worried. Maybe it was because the light was hitting her hair just so and making it resemble spun gold in the midday sun. Maybe it was the fact that she was his and he was hers, and he had never had something so _good_ before, had never felt less _alone_.

No matter the reason, it took all he had not to walk over there and take her into his arms.

“I’ve got everything,” Lyra told them. She must’ve been double-checking the bag. Will heard the zipper shut a second later and she turned around. She met Will’s eyes as she quickly did up the buttons on one of the new coats Will had gotten her, a long one that would hide her stomach. “Ready?”

Will understood that she was really asking him about the situation in general. _Are you okay with this? Does this seem safe to you? Is this what we should do_? _Can you see a better alternative? Do you trust Malcolm?_ They were as much a team now as they’d been when they were twelve. Will answered her silent question with a firm nod of his head. She nodded back, resolute.

“Let’s go,” Will decided.


	4. reel against your body's borders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyra discovers more about the prophecy. Malcolm shares secrets from his past. The three suffer a devastating blow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up: this chapter features mild/vague spoilers for La Belle Sauvage, but there's nothing too detailed. Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy ♥

Will’s first impression of Malcolm’s sailboat was that it’d be a miracle if it even stayed afloat.

It wasn’t that it wasn’t well-cared for—it was, with a particular loving tenderness apparent in the hand-painted lettering of the name _The Acorn_ —but it was old. Terribly old. Older than Will, easy, and maybe just a bit older than Malcolm himself, too. It was dwarfed and swallowed up by the surrounding boats at the docks so that, for the first minute or so, Will couldn’t even see the boat they were headed towards. When he finally did, he was seized by apprehension. He caught Lyra’s small hand before she stepped onboard.

“I don’t know,” he whispered to her. Pantalaimon crawled up to drape himself around her neck, so he could hear Will clearly and speak back to him, and Kirjava jumped into Will’s arms for the same purpose.

“It does look…old,” agreed Pantalaimon uneasily. Will and Lyra’s dæmon exchanged an understanding look.

“It’s not _so_ bad,” Lyra said. She bit her lower lip as she looked at it. “A bit small and worn, perhaps, but we haven’t exactly got another choice, have we?”

“No,” Kirjava agreed. “We haven’t. And anyway, he looks like he knows what he’s doing: look.”

They did. Malcolm and his dæmon, Asta, were expertly tending to the sails and ropes and all manner of sailing things Will was painfully unknowledgeable about. He realized maybe his true apprehension stemmed from the fact that he had never been on a boat as small as this. This would be a turbulent journey, a _cramped_ journey, and if something went wrong, there would only be himself, Lyra, and Malcolm to fix whatever the problem was. If something went wrong with Lyra, there would only be Will to help her. There would be no midwives, no hospitals. He wished he hadn’t breezed through his gynecological and pediatric rounds during his training. He had been so certain that he wanted to end up in emergency medicine—where quick, accurate diagnoses were crucial to survival, where his ability to find answers where others couldn’t could be put to best use—that he hadn’t given as much of himself to the different fields as he probably should have. He wished now that he could go back in time and retake all those courses, redo all those shadowing assignments, just so he’d feel better prepared.

But he was the doctor she had. And Malcolm was the sailor they had. And _The Acorn_ was the boat they had. So with a deep, resigned inhalation, Will tightened his hand around Lyra’s and stepped onto the boat with her, sealing their fate.

* * *

 

The first full day at sea was awful.

Lyra spent the entirety of it confined to the nearly-unlivable cabin beneath the ship. They had to make sure they weren’t being followed, and Malcolm and Will had both thought it best that she remain hidden until they were certain. Lyra had agreed at the time, of course; Malcolm had gone out of his way yesterday to sail them the complete opposite direction from Svalbard in order to make it look as if they _were_ going to Texas (this had taken the majority of day, and Lyra had been safe to sit in the cockpit as they _wanted_ people to spot her headed towards Texas) and it wouldn’t do for all their progress to be undone now because she couldn’t stand a bit of claustrophobia and seasickness. Their mission on that first true day at sea—from midnight the day they left until midnight of the next—was to slip out of sight of any other boats entirely, and then turn to head towards the north. As soon as they were on track—and certain they weren’t being followed in any manner—Lyra would be safe to come back out of the cabin.

It couldn’t come soon enough. To say she was miserable was a cruel understatement: she was so uncomfortable she felt driven to tears many times, though she wrestled them back with every ounce of effort she could muster. She had been seasick at the start of her first boat journey to the north, back when she was eleven and her life was really, truly starting, but that had been a much bigger boat, with a much more spacious and steady cabin, and she hadn’t been carrying a child. To be stuck beneath this tiny sailboat was a different sort of misery from the first. The cabin part of the boat had a ceiling so low Will had to duck when he stood and walked, a “kitchen” area that was really a worktop surface as long as Lyra’s arm that had a miniscule, rusted sink and one singular hob, a “sitting room” that was comprised of two narrow, built-in, padded benches adjacent to each other not long enough to accommodate even Lyra’s short stature when stretched all the way out, and then a tiny cupboard of a room with a single bed running along one wall and another single bed running across the other, the heads of the bed meeting in a V shape, and a tiny toilet tucked in a room so small it was a squeeze even for Lyra. No matter where in the cramped space she rested, she felt the continual rocking of the boat, and a damp, earthy smell present in the cabin made her even more nauseated on top of her seasickness. Pantalaimon thought it was mildew or even mold, though nobody but her and Pan seemed able to smell it. Will and Kirjava had bumped around the entire cabin sniffing different areas for at least five minutes—which might have been very comical to watch had Lyra not been groaning with nausea at the time—but had been unable to detect a source for the smell or even smell it at all.

It had been a bit better when Will was down there with her (even though it was much more cramped) because he kept her mind off her discomfort as much as possible, but Malcolm had enlisted his help on the deck an hour or so ago, and Lyra was getting quite impatient.

“I’ve got to go up there,” she told Pantalaimon. She was both cold and hot and couldn’t seem to get comfortable at all. She knew it was the nausea.

Pantalaimon felt this nausea much more acutely than he’d felt her morning sickness. He had only sometimes acted ill with her with her pregnancy symptoms, to the point that Lyra wondered if dæmons couldn’t feel those types of discomforts at all, but _this_ he was suffering full-force alongside her. He had spent the majority of the day tucked against her neck groaning in pain, their discomfort intermingled and doubled.

Still, despite his misery, he was her voice of reason. “We can’t. It’s not safe. Asta said there’s still a boat in the distance. We have to lose it before we can go out there.”

“I’ll lie in the cockpit where nobody can see me.”

“It’s wet down there,” Pan reminded her.

“It’s still got to be better than here.”

He couldn’t really argue with that. But before they could maneuver weakly to their feet, Kirjava leapt down from the cockpit, hissing softly and absolutely drenched with seawater. She looked angrier than any cat Lyra had ever seen. It momentarily distracted her.

“Are you all right, Kirjava?” she asked.

“No,” said Kirjava, her fur standing on end. “I hate sailing.”

“Us too,” Lyra agreed.

Kirjava walked around the cabin wiping her wet fur against everything she passed, trying to get some of the water off. To Lyra’s surprise, Pantalaimon leapt from the bed as if he felt perfectly fine (and she knew he didn’t). He walked over to rub his body against Kirjava’s, absorbing some of the moisture with his own fur. She calmed at once and stood there purring softly while Pantalaimon tended to her with a sweetness that made Lyra long for Will.

“Told you it was wet in the cockpit,” Pantalaimon told Lyra. He and Kirjava moved over to curl up beside her on the makeshift sofa.  

“Still better than here,” Lyra repeated, annoyed. She reached over towards the tiny worktop surface just a few inches away and grabbed a clean tea towel. She faced Kirjava and held it up questioningly; Kirjava stood and walked into Lyra’s hands, permitting her to gently scrub her fur down with the towel so that she was nearly completely dry. Afterwards, Kirjava and Pantalaimon curled into a tight, warm ball near Lyra’s chest, and she felt comforted by their closeness.

“What’s Will doing up there?” Lyra asked Kirjava.

Kirjava laughed. “Malcolm’s giving him sailing lessons. Will’s not fond of it so far. He wants to be down here with you.”

“I want him down here with me, too,” grumbled Lyra. She picked moodily at the peeling paint underneath the tiny, round window behind her. But she knew it was important that somebody else on the boat knew how to sail it in case Malcolm fell ill. She would’ve been glad to offer up her services—she had been a quick learner when on the Costa’s boat—but she had to stay below for now. “Is that boat still following us?”

“It looks to be heading in a different direction now. We should be out of sight soon.”

It was the first good news she’d heard all day. She tried to take a nap to while away the time, but it was impossible with the awful smell in the air and the rolling of the waves, so she pulled her alethiometer out instead. She turned and leaned her back against the cold window and pulled her knees up to her chest. She wanted to ask the alethiometer about her baby, about whether it’d be a boy or a girl, but she didn’t think it was right to ask it without Will with her. Instead, she found herself asking about things she really ought not to. She had decided the prophecy didn’t matter, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. She asked her question in many different ways, getting confusing answers that she couldn’t work through, until she finally framed the question in a way that got her a useable answer. She dropped her focus afterwards and looked to the dæmons. They had moved to the sofa across from Lyra’s and were peering out the small window.

“Kirjava?” asked Lyra, because she knew what Pan knew, and she knew he didn’t know what she was about to ask.

Kirjava jumped gracefully from one sofa to the other, landing right beside Lyra. She looked at her expectantly. Lyra rubbed a smudge from the front of her alethiometer and asked: “Have you ever heard of ‘the lawless one’?”

Kirjava cocked her head to the side curiously. “The _lawless_ one?”

Lyra nodded. She stretched her legs out and set her alethiometer down on her lap. “I can’t make sense of the answers my alethiometer gives me when I ask ‘what is the prophecy surrounding the child’ or anything like that…but I asked it ‘what does the Church think my child will be?’ and it told me…at least, I _think_ it told me…‘the lawless one’. It’s confusing ‘cause it used a certain level of meaning of a combination that I’ve never seen in practice, only read about: the sun and then the moon, one after another, the combination hit nine times, meant to signify _opposites_ , and then it gave me the marionette and it landed there five times and the fifth meaning of the marionette is one who follows orders, or rules, or laws, which means together the opposite of a lawful one…a lawless one.” She reached up and ran her fingers through her hair impatiently, pushing it out of her eyes. “It’s weird, though, ‘cause I can think of about two different and easier ways it could’ve told me that, but it said it _this way_ which means there’s more to it…I think it’s the sun and moon combination that is saying more, only I don’t know what…”

Kirjava didn’t know much more than Lyra and Pantalaimon did.

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of that—the lawless one. Maybe Asta knows.”

Malcolm and Asta were well-educated and knowledgeable. It was worth a shot. “Maybe. Do you think she’s busy?”

“Probably, but I can go up and help and ask her while we work,” Kirjava offered, though Lyra knew the last thing she really wanted was to leave the dryness of the cabin. “I should be helping anyway. Will is probably cross with me.”

“Tell him you were helping me,” suggested Lyra. “He’ll be all right with that.”

“You mean lie to him?”

“It’s not _really_ a lie…I liked you being down here. It made me feel better. That’s helping me, in a way, isn’t it?”

Kirjava couldn’t really argue with that, though there would be no deceiving him on _why_ she had initially come down here: he would have felt her initial revulsion and annoyance.

While Will and Kirjava suffered through sailing lessons, Lyra and Pantalaimon rode out the waves of nausea beneath the ship.

* * *

 

It was dark outside the briny window when Lyra finally heard Will’s boots thudding against the three short stairs leading down into the cabin from the cockpit. When he emerged—soaked to the bone and shaking from cold—she forgot her own discomfort as quickly as Pantalaimon had forgotten his when faced with a miserable Kirjava.

“You look as if you’ve been swimming!” she exclaimed, concerned. She rose from the makeshift sofa and crossed the cramped area in two short steps. She took Will’s hands—swollen and wet and a purplish red from cold—into hers. She drew his arms around her waist and pushed his hands up the back of her shirt, splaying his stiff, frozen fingers out against her bare skin for warmth. That seemed to break through his exhausted and uncomfortable haze; he let himself stagger into the heat of her embrace afterwards, his body dreadfully frigid and damp. “You need to get out of those clothes—here, I’ll start the kettle and you can have something warm to drink—I bet Dr. Polstead’s got chocolatl somewhere—Will, you’re shaking so much.”

She tightened her arms around him. He was leaning into her so totally that Lyra staggered a bit beneath his weight. He caught himself and straightened at once. Lyra felt a sting of unjustified annoyance at Dr. Polstead for having returned Will to her in this state (and a bit guilty for having just spent the past half-hour complaining about how cold it was in the cabin to Pan; Will must have been _much_ colder.)

“I-It’s not just the cold,” admitted Will, and Lyra watched as he stumbled back to collapse onto the edge of the sofa. He reached blindly for a scratchy wool blanket folded to his right. Lyra hurried over and shook it out, wrapping it tightly around his shoulders, wishing it was made of the soft fabric their baby’s blanket was so he’d be warmer and more comfortable. Once she’d wrapped the blanket around him, she moved to sit in his lap, hoping her body heat would warm him up. It did seem to still his chattering teeth a bit. He gave a deep inhalation and then continued on. “My body—this body—my mind—I’ve nearly snapped back to my own world about three times this past hour. I don’t even know what time it is or how long I’ve been here but I don’t know how much longer I can keep fighting it off—”

Panic welled inside Lyra. “You shouldn’t _be_ fighting it off. If your mind is trying to go back to your own body, it’s probably for a reason, like your health, so you need to do it.”

She said it bravely and confidently, though she felt as if her heart were turning itself inside out at the thought of spending the night without him. It had been a miserable day, and she’d pushed through it with the hope that, come nighttime, she and Will would be able to curl up together and warm each other and talk to each other and laugh and that maybe things would be _nice_ for at least a couple of hours. But that plainly wasn’t happening now.

Will shook his head. It sent icy water droplets flying around him, splashing Lyra in her cheek and a nearby Pan in the eye. Pantalaimon fled and went to join Kirjava as she entered the cabin. She went to lie in front of the small, noisy tricarbane heater chugging away in the corner: she was irritable and weak-looking, and Lyra felt a sting of affectionate concern for her.

“I don’t want to go,” Will said. “What if something happens and I’m not here to help?”

Lyra shrugged her shoulders. “So what if it does? We can’t do anything about that risk. You can’t just waste away in your own world and you know it.”

He did. She knew that he did. She could see the pain and love intermingled in his dark eyes. She was tired of saying goodbye.

“So go on,” she said, sounding and looking much braver than she felt. “Go have a little kip. I’ll sleep, too. Then come back in the morning.”

He was the sensible one so it wasn’t difficult to get him to see reason, but it still hurt to let go of his hand. His kisses were numb and clumsy against her mouth. He didn’t tell her goodbye—Lyra was breathlessly thankful for this—but he asked her if she needed him to bring anything back from his world, and he tucked her hair behind her ears, and he fussed over her.

“And you’re doing okay down here?” he asked before he left.

“Yeah,” lied Lyra easily. From the corner of the cabin, Kirjava was giving her an almost sardonic look. The corners of Will’s mouth twitched up in response.

“Liar,” he accused, though his voice was soft and playful. “Kirjava says you’ve been miserable down here.”

“Well, maybe Kirjava’s the liar. Ever think of that?” teased Lyra.

He snorted. His lips were curved into a smile as she leaned in and kissed him again (and again, and again, and again…)

He brushed his fingers through her hair as they separated. “I’ll bring something for motion sickness back with me. Maybe it will help.”

Her expression twisted. “I hope so if I’m going to have to be stuck down here often,” she said honestly. She thought about the things she’d discovered through her alethiometer in his absence and let out a little gasp. “Oh, I almost forgot to ask, Kirjava, did you—”

But Kirjava was gone and Lyra’s arms were now looped around emptiness. She knew he hadn’t meant to go yet, and she was certain his departure was tormenting him all the more for it.

Pantalaimon let out a doleful-sounding sigh. Lyra dropped her arms to her sides. She inhaled and tried to shove down the sorrow climbing up her throat. She wondered if she would ever stop fearing that every time he said goodbye would be the last time. She shut her eyes and breathed through the urge to cry, and as soon as she’d mastered it, she stood taller.

“Okay,” she said, and Pantalaimon moved to her side at once. “Dr. Polstead’s still out there, and if he’s in the state that Will was, he’ll be needing a hot drink and a blanket. So you go out and check if we can safely go out there and I’ll put the kettle on. Wherever it is…”

It felt good to do something productive rather than just lie around moaning. And she didn’t know why—maybe there had been a change in weather, maybe the sea was calmer at night, maybe they’d changed currents—but the boat was rocking less and less and that was helping her seasickness immensely. Pan scurried up to the open air while Lyra found the dusty kettle, cleaned it unskillfully under the small tap, and then filled it with water. She had trouble lighting the marine stove—she had learned how to do so on Ma Costa’s boat when she was eleven, but that was a very long time ago—and when it finally flared successfully, the smell of the fuel made her sway on her feet with another surge of queasiness. She fought through it, though, and was able to find a mug with a fitted top— _smart,_ she thought, thinking of the way the boat had been swaying earlier—and some chocolatl powder. She had just finished dumping it in the mug when Pantalaimon scurried back down into the cabin.

“It’s dark enough and there’s no one in sight so they say we can come up,” Pan shared.

Lyra felt considerably more cheerful hearing that. With the prospect of fresh air and a starry sky to look forward to, she finished making the chocolatl in higher spirits than she’d been in since she’d first hid in the boat.

Pantalaimon led the way up the three stairs and out into the cockpit while Lyra held Dr. Polstead’s mug securely between her hands. She could smell the salt in the air and the feel the sting of the frigid, brisk wind against her cheeks. At once, her nose felt numb with cold. Foolishly, she wondered for a moment if they were already in the north. It certainly felt cold enough to her (but then again, she hadn’t bundled up in anything more than a light coat, which was probably contributing to her discomfort).

She stepped down into the cockpit carefully. The fiberglass was slightly slippery, and Lyra was taken aback by how much smaller the boat looked in the darkness, with the black sea stretching out infinitely in every direction and the dark sky melding so seamlessly with it that Lyra might not have been able to tell which was water and which was sky if it weren’t for the bright spattering of stars.

Pantalaimon darted across the small area—lit by a couple naphtha lanterns spread about—and joined Asta on the back ledge of the cockpit, peering out into the darkness. She rubbed her head against Pan’s affectionately as soon as he joined her. Lyra didn’t see Dr. Polstead in the cockpit, but as she walked towards the aft of the boat where the dæmons were, she heard his voice.

“Feeling better?” Dr. Polstead asked.

She turned to face forward, towards the bow of the boat, where his voice had sounded from. He was standing on the side of the boat pulling at a line, smiling at her as if this were nothing more than a leisurely holiday adventure. Lyra shrugged noncommittally and watched as he secured the line. It looked to be the easiest thing in the world, but Lyra was certain there was a complexity to it all that she couldn’t yet appreciate.

With the boat presumably sailing the way it ought to, he stepped down into the cockpit to join her. His smile widened as he spotted the mug in Lyra’s hand.

“I see you found the chocolatl,” he said approvingly.

Lyra realized he thought she’d made it for herself. She thrust the mug out towards him.

“I made it for you.”

He looked genuinely pleased as he accepted the chocolatl. He sipped at it and warmed his hands on the hot mug.

“Wonderful,” he beamed. “Thank you, Lyra.”

She felt a bit embarrassed by his gratitude and wasn’t sure what to say in response. He seemed comfortable enough, though. He moved to sit on one of the built-in benches of the cockpit, entirely at ease and content.

“Well, I figured you had to have some on board somewhere,” Lyra finally said. She walked over and sat on the bench across from him. “You _always_ made us chocolatl when you were teaching me.”

He laughed. “Yes, that chocolatl kept you coming to your lessons longer than you went to any others. None of the other Scholars had ever thought to try offering you a nice warm drink to get you to sit still and listen for a few minutes.”

Lyra scoffed. “I knew it was a bribe, I just thought the chocolatl was good enough that I didn’t mind. All the others Scholars made me sit at tables in the library, or in their dull lecture halls, but you let me sit in the Scholar Lounge and drink hot chocolatl.”

In fact, she hadn’t realized it was a bribe and felt ashamed on behalf of her younger, wilder self to have been tricked into sitting still for a philosophy lesson by something as elementary as _chocolatl_. She had honestly thought he made the chocolatl every time because he was addicted to it, just like a few other Scholars had addictions to coffee.

“That’s what Dr. Relf always did for me,” Dr. Polstead shared. He was smiling fondly, though Lyra realized it was due to whatever memory he was replaying now. “I used to go to her house weekly and we’d talk about all sorts of things…books, our studies…and we’d always have chocolatl. Years and years we kept up that tradition. I thought maybe you’d enjoy it like I did.”

Lyra was taken aback. She realized that what she’d assumed was manipulation had actually just been Dr. Polstead attempting to create the same sort of kind memories for her that Dame Hannah had for him. She suddenly wished she’d made herself a mug so she could’ve filled the silence by drinking her own chocolatl. She felt strange thinking about when she was young, half-ashamed and half-nostalgic, and her emotions were turbulent enough as it was.

“Has Will gone back then?” Dr. Polstead inquired. He turned and looked down into the open cabin as if half-expecting to see Will down there. Lyra guessed Will had filled Dr. Polstead in on his strange method of traveling while he was receiving sailing lessons.

“Yeah,” she admitted, and then she looked away because her eyes were burning.

“When will he be back?” he wondered. “Morning?”

“Yes. I hope.”

The burning in her eyes was only growing. She felt foolish and frustrated with herself. Hadn’t he come back every time he said he would? Hadn’t he demonstrated more and more control over this weird method of traveling every day? So why did she still feel so petrified every time he left?

Pantalaimon—sensing her sadness, feeling it himself—left Asta’s side and padded sadly over towards Lyra. He curled up in her lap and pressed his face against her stomach. Lyra looked off into the distance while she stroked his fur.

She’d thought she was doing a decent job of masking her emotions. So she was surprised when Dr. Polstead set his mug down and leaned forward to ask, with deep concern in his voice: “Are you okay?”

“‘Course,” she said thickly, not wanting to talk about it, but also not wanting to go back down to the cabin to be alone. She took a deep breath and looked back at Dr. Polstead. “I expect I’ll need sailing lessons, too. Do you think we were followed? Do I have to hide again in the morning or can I stay up here?”

Asta answered for Dr. Polstead. She darted over and sat on the bench beside him. “We’re not being followed—for now. We’re on course to the north. You shouldn’t need to hide below again unless we’re spotted.”

Lyra nodded, relieved. “We can start tomorrow. That way if you get ill or need a break, I can take over. It wouldn’t be fair for you to have to stay awake manning the boat all the time, anyway.”

He knew better than to try and argue with her. “Okay. I don’t think Will enjoyed it much.”

Lyra felt a smile break through. She looked back at Dr. Polstead, meeting his eyes for the first time since she’d gotten upset. “No, I don’t think so, either. Kirjava was highly offended by the entire ordeal.”

“Still—he was decent. Good, even, for a first-time sailor. He works hard. And he learns quickly,” Dr. Polstead said approvingly.

Lyra felt a flash of fierce pride. “Yeah, he does. All sorts of things. He learned how to use the—” she stopped, realizing all at once that Dr. Polstead probably had no idea what the subtle knife was, and she wasn’t sure she felt up to retelling the entire events of the war to him presently. If she had to relive the trauma of leaving Will tonight, even just long enough to tell the story to someone, she was certain it would puncture her fragile control over her emotions. “Well. He can do all sorts of stuff well. Always could.”

Dr. Polstead clearly noticed her slip-up, but he didn’t comment on it.

“He’s a very serious man,” Dr. Polstead mused. He glanced at Lyra with an inquisitive sort of look, like he was trying to figure out how she and Will fit together. “Practical. Intense. Looking into his eyes reminds me of looking into—” he stopped and seemed to think better of finishing his sentence, leaving Lyra immensely curious.

“Reminds you of who?” she wondered. “Whose eyes?”

He dismissed his own half-comment. “Nevermind. It’s not important. Just somebody I knew who was very…commanding and intimidating. I think Will’s like that.”

Lyra wasn’t sure if she should take offense to that comment or not. She couldn’t tell if he was praising Will or insulting him. “Yeah, I guess he can be like that sometimes. So what?”

“So I can see why the Church fears him. That’s all I meant,” Dr. Polstead said. “I think he’s brave, and I can tell he has a good heart, and what’s more, he loves you desperately.”

All of these things were true. Lyra wasn’t sure why, but she felt pleased to hear Dr. Polstead approve of Will. She hadn’t realized his opinion mattered that much to her, but sitting there with him in the middle of that black abyss, he felt as familiar as Jordan.

“Dr. Polstead?”

“Malcolm,” he suggested.

She tried it out again. She had forgotten. “Malcolm.”

“Yes?”

She looked down at her hands in her lap, red and stiff with cold. “Do you know anything about someone called ‘the lawless one’? Maybe it’s a term used in scripture or a term used by the Consistorial Court?”

Asta whispered something to Malcolm. He leaned down so he could hear her better and listened intently. Lyra wondered if Asta was repeating whatever Kirjava had probably told her. His eyes flashed to Lyra as Asta spoke, darting once to her stomach, where Pantalaimon still had his face pressed as he rested.

Malcolm straightened. “Your alethiometer told you this is what the Church thinks your child will be?”

Lyra nodded. “I asked it today. It wouldn’t let me…” she trailed off, searching for a way to explain something as complex as the alethiometer. She had no idea if Dr. Polstead— _Malcolm_ , she corrected herself—had ever even seen one up close before. “Well, you’ve got to frame your question in just the right way using the symbols around the edges, right, and every time I frame any question that asks about the prophecy about my child—what it said, or anything like that—it gives me an answer so complex I feel like it’s confusing me on purpose. So then I reframed what I wanted to know and I asked what the Church _thought_ my child would be, and it told me that. ‘The lawless one’. I never listened to anything Father Heyst tried to teach me growing up so I’m not well-acquainted with Biblical terminology.”

Malcolm looked as if he were trying his hardest to hide his discomfort. Lyra thought of him as such a calm-spirited, gentle sort of man that seeing him genuinely bothered by something unsettled her.

“What?” she asked sharply. “Do you know what it means?”

“I know what _they’ll_ think it means. I had a lot of religious education forced upon me when I was a boy. That phrase is used in the translation of the Bible that Geneva adopted.”

Lyra suddenly wished she’d listened better to Father Heyst. “But not in every version?”

“The general idea remains the same in every version, though of course the Church has long-ago burned any version other than the New Genevian Version, which Father Heyst would have inevitably used to try and instruct you. The phrase itself comes from a passage in Two Thessalonians. I couldn’t quote it off the top of my head. I have done my best to forget the brainwashing I was subjected to in my boyhood.”

Lyra was impatient. “But what does it have to do with? Who is the lawless one? What do they do?”

“Frankly, the lawless one is interpreted by the Church to be in reference to the Antichrist who comes in the last of days.”

Lyra froze. Pantalaimon shivered in her lap. She set a consoling hand on his back; he nuzzled closer to her stomach as if to protect the baby. “The _what_?”

“Now, that’s a very narrow interpretation by the Church. Many religious-minded Scholars who have examined truer translations think the passage is referring to someone who lived during Jesus’s time who already came and went, but the Church believes there will be a specific individual—the ‘lawless one’ as this individual is called in the New Genevian Version, or ‘wickedness made man’ as in other versions—who will have an astounding ability to turn everyone away from God. The lawless one is said to be someone who will take up a role of power and earn the faith of the faithful by revealing ‘counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders’—I remember that specifically because my friend Eric kept reciting it back to our teacher as _counterpart_ miracles, signs, and wonders; he always got words mixed up—anyway, in general, this is a figure meant to signify the end of the Church, though the Church will tell you it signifies the end of times, though you knowing what you know, and me knowing what _I_ know…well, the reality the Church sells isn’t exactly _reality_ , is it?”

“No,” agreed Lyra faintly, her heart racing, her mind swirling with this new information.

Malcolm continued. “The passage warns that this lawless one is doomed to destruction, that Jesus will ‘overthrow’ them ‘with the breath of his mouth’. I remember that, too, because I took it literally at first. Turns out it just means the Word of God and not Jesus actually blowing a huge gust of air at someone. The entire point of it all really reads as a warning, in my opinion. ‘Don’t let people convince you that God isn’t real because they’ll be destroyed and you’ll be condemned to hell if you do.’”

“But there _is_ no hell,” Lyra heard herself say, frustration twisting and winding between every syllable. It seemed so absurd to her to be sitting there, on the run from the Church who wanted to forcibly kill her (and her unborn child) over something that _wasn’t even real_. She could have screamed. “There’s not. Will and I, we went to where you go when you die, and it’s _nothing_. Malcolm, everybody went to the same place just the same. Just the same. It didn’t matter whether you was—you were a saintly priest or an awful murderer; you went to the same place, and nothing ever happened there except you were tormented by harpies! And what the Church was worshiping…it wasn’t a creator of any sort. The Authority wasn’t a creator, he was a dictator, and he’s dead—Will and I killed him—and Metatron was just another angel who thought he’d try to take things over, but he’s dead—my parents killed him– and—!”

“Wait,” Malcolm interrupted. His pale complexion looked paler than it had before. “I think we ought to back up…”

Malcolm was watching her with wide-eyed attention for the entire time it took her to wearily relive all her experiences from the war. And it took a long while: he and Asta went down into the cabin to retrieve blankets so they could bundle up against the ever-worsening chill halfway through. She could tell all of what she was saying wasn’t news to him, but perhaps she was telling it in a way that was shocking to him. He and Dame Hannah seemed close; Lyra wondered what—if anything—Dame Hannah had told him already. Whatever it was, she hadn’t worded it like Lyra was.

When she finished, he shook his head as if in disbelief.

“Of course, I knew some of this,” he told her. “I knew your father was responsible for taking down the angel known as Metatron. The Church, of course, denies any such angel ever existed, but I trusted Lord Asriel.”

“Did you?” said Lyra, mildly interested, slightly bitter. “I didn’t.”

Malcolm looked to the side and frowned. “Your friend. The Parslow boy…”

“Any trust I might have had in my father died with him.”

Malcolm looked back at her, and she looked at him, and she knew that he understood and would have felt the same way in her place. There was a sadness she couldn’t understand, though, as if it was a tragedy to him to hear that her relationship with her father was one built on contempt. She supposed he was one of those lucky few who had parents who loved and cared for him. They had never understood her.

“Did Dame Hannah…? I mean, I expected her to tell important people parts of it all…I hoped she would, really, as some parts are terribly important, like what the Authority was doing with the land of the dead, and what Will and I did to change it, and what Lord Asriel was fighting against, and the fact that Dust is good and not evil…but other parts…”

Lyra trailed off. She thought of the times Dame Hannah had found her in tears during her first year at St. Sophia’s School (Dame Hannah had gone out of her way to check in on Lyra often). She wouldn’t have liked Dame Hannah to tell anybody anything about Will, or her, or the things they went through (the things they lost). 

“She did not betray your confidence,” Malcolm reassured her. He smiled (and she believed him.) “She’s quite good at keeping secrets.”

Lyra nodded. Even now, the thought of the last time she saw Will when she was twelve made her eyes fill with tears. She looked away again.

“So you see why I find this all so…distressing,” she said thickly. It was half-true. She did find all of this with the Church immensely upsetting, but currently, she had tears in her eyes from a trauma that happened over a decade ago. “They are planning to do such horrible, wicked things to me for _nothing_. There’s nothing up there anymore. They can say that there is, but there’s not. There’s no heaven except the heavens we can build for ourselves here on earth. There’s no afterlife except for when we dissolve and become part of everything else. And so my child _can’t be_ the…lawless one or the antichrist. Not in the way they think.”

“Maybe that’s why your alethiometer was so particular about the way you framed the question,” Malcolm suggested gently. He seemed to be aware of her fraught emotions. “It would only say that that’s what _the Church_ thought your child would be, not that that’s what your child is. And you must think of it this way, too: the Church won’t fear ‘the lawless one’ because they think he—or she—is a true threat to mankind’s salvation. They’ll fear them because they’ll think ‘the lawless one’ will finally diminish their power once and for all, and the last thing the Church wants is to lose control when they’ve only just started gaining it again. I don’t presume to know anything about the prophecy the Church claims to have heard of…and truly, Lyra, I wouldn’t be surprised if this second prophecy never happened and was simply a lie those at the top of the Church told those at the bottom to justify murdering you and your child…but I see why they would be wary of you and Will having a baby.”

She shook her head. She felt tired. She lowered her face into her hands and felt Pantalaimon snuggle into her arms to comfort her.

“Think about it,” Malcolm pressed on, his voice growing softer and softer as Lyra grew wearier. “Those who know the truth of what happened…with the Authority, with Metatron…they would have heard from their spies how close you and Will were during it all. You were already being called the second Eve, and Eve is the mother of us all, isn’t she? Eve repopulated the earth with beings full of original sin and wickedness...if you ask the Church, anyway. And at Eve’s side, Adam, a role one could easily say Will fulfilled. With the role you played in keeping Dust around…and the fact that Will was going around with a knife created for the purpose of destroying God…and the fact that your parents killed Metatron, and you and Will—in a way—killed the Authority himself …and the fact that your child with Will would be a citizen of two separate worlds when the Church has fought so hard for so long to deny that parallel worlds even exist in the first place…well, I see why they wouldn’t be eager to have you two reproduce.” 

Lyra hadn’t even considered the idea that the Church was fabricating the prophecy itself. Was that why her alethiometer acted so oddly whenever she inquired about the prophecy’s content directly? Or was there more to it, more that it was keeping from her? She had to admit she preferred the theory that didn’t push some sort of cosmic destiny onto her child.

“And that’s just the sort of thing the Church loves to do, isn’t it?” mused Malcolm. “Tell people when they can and can’t have babies, who they can and can’t love. Yeah, that’s what this is about, Lyra,” he said, confident. “This is about their control and their power and their belief that you’re going to ultimately be their downfall. You came close to being it before. And they’ve always been terrified of you, even when _you_ were a tiny infant. You had all sorts of important people in an uproar over you, you did. It would’ve been unbelievable to anybody who hadn’t met you that a tiny baby could cause all that ruckus.”

Something about the way he said that sounded as if he knew that from firsthand experience, as if he had seen the way people acted around her when she was an infant. It made Lyra curious and she felt the same curiosity flowing from Pantalaimon. Dr. Polstead hadn’t been a Jordan Scholar when she was a baby—he was far too young. So how could he have seen her when she was a baby? But before they could ask him about it, he stood.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, edging over to check the sails and their course once more. Asta darted along ahead of him. “Your child is just that: your child. It’s as innocent as you were when you were born. No matter what the Church thinks, the baby hasn’t done _anything._ So nobody’s going to hurt it.”

Lyra shook her head in disbelief. “You and Will keep saying that.”

“Well, I’d believe it if Will told me that. He’s…intense,” commented Malcolm. “ _I_ certainly wouldn’t cross him.”

Lyra had to laugh a bit.

“Though I suppose he’s probably not like that with you,” mused Malcolm, his hands back to tending the lines and sails. “Maybe you’ve no idea what I’m talking about when I call him intense, and in which case, maybe you’d feel safer if you could.”

“Oh, no. He’s certainly like that with me,” said Lyra slyly, not thinking anything of it, as if she were talking freely with a close friend she regularly talked about personal things with. She blushed at once, shocked at herself for saying something so potentially crass around a fellow Scholar—a _Jordan_ Scholar! One of _hers_!—but Malcolm gave a loud, amused hoot, and Asta laughed. Maybe they didn’t get what she was saying, maybe they thought she was just referring to all the times she had seen Will at his fiercest during the war. But then Malcolm tsked.

“Perhaps that’s how you ended up in this predicament in the first place, you know,” he joked lightly. The patches of color on Lyra’s cheeks reddened; she somewhat welcomed the warmth, though it made them sting as the frigid air hit them. “Didn’t anybody at that stuffy college teach you how babies are made? I shall speak with Hannah about the conservative education at her college.”

Coolly, as if they joked about these things all the time: “No, they did all right at St. Sophia’s on that front. I just didn’t care much.”

Her frankness sent him into stitches of laughter. Lyra couldn’t help but laugh along with him; it was contagious. At once, her embarrassment melted, and she felt as easy and comfortable laughing with him as if they’d been friends all her life.

“Ah, Lyra,” he said, tears of laughter glistening in his eyes. “You’re much different now and still just the same. It’s one of time’s many blessings.”

Lyra—cold and shivering once more, her stomach rumbling with hunger, exhaustion now permeating every atom of her being—had no idea what he was talking about. And she wanted to press the comment because she felt as if Malcolm knew something she didn’t, something he desperately _wanted_ her to ask him about, but she wouldn’t be able to stay out here much longer. She needed to get back into the slightly-warmer cabin and Pan knew it. Right as she had the thought, he flowed up to drape himself around her neck, for the dual purpose of both warming her and murmuring: _We need to go back in_.

“Do you have to stay out here all night?” wondered Lyra. The thought was lonely and miserable to her, but Malcolm smiled, at ease.

“I’ve got a brilliant windvane; I’ll be able to catch a couple hours sleep on and off all night. You take the bedroom—”

“No,” Lyra protested at once, having anticipated this and having already rehearsed her complaint. “It’s _your_ boat. _You’re_ the one risking your life to help _me_. You should have the bedroom. I can sleep on the sofa just fine: I’m much shorter than you, and anyway, I’ve already made myself a nest of sorts with all my blankets I’ve brought along, and the area feels quite homey.”

Lies, all of them, but for a good purpose.

“You won’t be comfortable at all on that sofa,” he protested. He must’ve tried to sleep on it before. It _was_ dreadfully uncomfortable. “Plus you had to stay down there all day and I know that must have been horrible. Take the bedroom. It’s not even much of a bedroom, mind you: the bed is awful. But at least there’s space to stretch out and it doesn’t rock as much as the main cabin does.”

“But it doesn’t even matter if I’m comfortable because—”

“Why should I have the bedroom when I’m only going to be able to sleep for around two hours at a time? I’ll wake you up trudging back and forth from the bedroom to the cockpit all night. It’s better if you can have the bedroom. You can close the hatch and I’ll just leave the cockpit door open so I can listen out for the ship; I’ll wake if anything sounds off and I’ll be able to hear better from the sofa than from the bedroom. It’s where I’d sleep if you weren’t here.”

Lyra was skeptical, but he was winning her over bit by bit. She truly didn’t want to sleep on the sofa; it was lumpy and cold, and the mildew-smell was overpowering. “Really?”

“Really,” he promised her, smiling again. “But if you really do want the sofa, I’ll just take the other one.”

Lyra sighed. “Well, I guess we shouldn’t leave the bedroom unused.”

“No, that’d be silly,” he agreed, and then he winked good-naturedly.

She rose to her feet. “But you’re not just letting me have it because I’m pregnant, right?”

He shook his head at once. “Of course not. I’m letting you have it because it’s sensible to.”

She nodded, accepting this. “Once you teach me how to sail, we can take turns doing night watch, so you can get a proper night’s sleep.”

If he distrusted her ability to learn to sail well enough to leave _The Acorn_ in her care, it didn’t show. He just nodded back at her like she’d made a very good point in a philosophical argument.

“Splendid,” he agreed.

Lyra cradled Pantalaimon in her arms like a baby as they descended down into the cabin (he seemed even more exhausted than her.) She set him down to gather her things from the storage bins underneath the sofa in the main area of the cabin. He padded tiredly to the bedroom and jumped up on one of the single beds.

“Look,” she heard him call. She was still sorting through her things, searching for her warmest sleepwear, her toothbrush, and her bar of lavender soap. “This thing pops up and makes these two beds into one big one.” She heard the sound of springs protesting and then a large _bam!_ “Oh, this is much better. There’s room for Will and Kirjava if they’re ever able to stay the night.”

Lyra doubted they’d be able to. He had become exhausted so much quicker today than he usually did. It worried her, though she was trying not to dwell on that worry lest she made herself sick.

She squeezed into the tiny toilet-area, washed her face in the cold water from the sputtering tap, brushed her teeth, and then pulled her warmest dressing gown over her nightie. She would sleep in it to stay warm.

Pantalaimon curled up against her neck as soon as she’d crawled into the bed. The mattress was little more than a thick foam layer set on top of wooden planks, but she was able to stretch her legs, and the blankets were warm. The rocking of the boat _was_ much less pronounced here than in the main cabin. Lyra felt Pan move and thought nothing of it—he had probably gone to say goodnight to Asta or shut the bedroom hatch—and she was half-asleep when she felt him return. He curled back up against her neck, bringing with him the distinct softness of that blanket Will had bought.

“That’s meant to be the baby’s,” Lyra scolded Pantalaimon tiredly. “You’re going to have to give it back once she’s born.”

“I will,” defended Pantalaimon. He nuzzled close to her neck and Lyra had to admit the warm softness of the white blanket was immensely wonderful. “I bet they’ll get us one of our own if we ask. I bet there are big versions.”

“Well, _I’m_ not asking for one. _You_ can ask them if you like,” scoffed Lyra. She yawned heavily a moment later.

“I will, then,” sniffed Pan. “I dunno why we don’t have this fabric in our world.”

“Shhh.”

“Do you think it’s from an animal we don’t have?”

“No. I think it’s from a factory. _Shh_.”

“That was odd earlier, wasn’t it? When Dr. Polstead—”

“Malcolm,” corrected Lyra automatically.

“Yeah, okay. When he was talking like he knew us when we were a baby.”

Lyra _was_ immensely tired, but she leaned back and looked at Pantalaimon at that comment. His fur shined in the dim moonlight coming in from the portside window.

“Yeah, that _was_ odd,” agreed Lyra. She reached out and rubbed the fabric of the blanket between her fingers as she thought. “Odder still was how he spoke of Lord Asriel, like he knew him well. Do you think he knew him when _I_ was born?”

The idea excited Lyra, though she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because she had yet to hear much of anything about what her parents were like when she was a baby (or what _she_ was like.) She would’ve liked to have heard more about baby Pantalaimon and herself. What were their first words? Pan’s first form? What was his preferred form? What age was she when Pantalaimon appeared? They were questions she’d never considered before she was pregnant, but now that she was, she wondered about them often.

“I dunno,” Pantalaimon mused. “He’s not _that_ much older than us, is he? A decade, maybe? So he would’ve still been a child when we were born. Why would he have known Lord Asriel?”

“He knew Dame Hannah then, remember? He said he went to her house every week.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know how well Dame Hannah knew Lord Asriel, and anyway, he made it sound as if it was just for studying purposes.”

“Maybe,” allowed Lyra. “Though I don’t think it was just that. Remember the stories he used to tell us when he was teaching us? About the CCD—though he never outright called the group _CCD_ but that’s who he was talking about, we were clever enough then to know that, and I think he knew we did, too—and spies, and the great flood, and fairylands, and giants?”

“Stories from books,” Pan dismissed at once. “He said so.”

“Yeah, well, he _said so_ , but that doesn’t mean that’s the truth.”

“I guess.”

Lyra and her dæmon lapsed into silence as they thought, together and separately, about whatever Malcolm was hiding.

“Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s anything bad,” decided Lyra. “I think he’s really on our side.”

“Me too,” agreed Pantalaimon.

“I think he wants us to ask him about it.”

“Yeah, did you see the way he looked at us after the comment about when we were a baby? Like he hoped it triggered a memory of some sort?”

Lyra hadn’t noticed that. Or, well, part of her had, since Pan had, but she hadn’t been aware of it.

“We can ask him later,” decided Lyra. She yawned again and burrowed closer to Pantalaimon and the soft blanket.

She and Pantalaimon slipped off into sleep easier than she’d anticipated they would, though it was fitful and light. They dreamed together about canoes and babies, and when they woke, neither remembered a thing.

* * *

 

Using a skill crafted over his entire lifetime thus far, Will managed to do some quick shopping with Kirjava in his arms without anyone looking twice at him. He could make himself invisible to everyone when he wanted to be, and it wasn’t until he stepped up at the till of his last stop that he was addressed, and only then because the man scanning his items at the till recognized him.

“Hey,” the man said, surprised. He set the ginger tablets down and grinned crookedly at Will. “Ain’t you the doctor who stitched my back up?” his eyes darted down to Will’s left hand. “Yeah, you are! How’re things?” A pause. “Blimey, that cat is _huge_. I never saw one so huge like that. Hey, you allowed to have that in here?”

Will set his last item down at the till. Kirjava stared unrelentingly at the man until he averted his eyes with a nervous-sounding chuckle. Will was a bit surprised to find the man working in a pharmacy; for some reason, he’d imagined him working in a bar, probably due to the alcohol content in his blood when he’d seen to him in A&E.

“She’s an emotional support animal; she can go anywhere with me. And yeah, that was me,” affirmed Will, because there was no way he could deny it. There weren’t many young A&E doctors missing two fingers. “How’s your back? You checked in with your GP when you were told to, correct?”

“Yeah, yeah!” beamed the man. “It’s great and the scar’s healing up nice, real nice!”

“Glad to hear it,” said Will honestly.

The man put the ginger tablets in a bag and then scanned the sea-sickness wristband. He looked up at Will. “This for you?”

“Yes,” lied Will. “I have some traveling to do and I get very sick in the air.”

The man nodded understandingly. “You know Stugeron works better. I got the tablets right back here if you want them.”

Will did know that, but you weren’t supposed to take those while pregnant, though he couldn’t exactly tell the man that.

“This’ll do just fine. Thank you, though.”

The man gave him his total. Will set Kirjava down at his feet and pulled his card out to pay, but before he did, Kirjava bumped her head against his leg. He looked down at her; she was staring at a display shelf to their right. On an impulse, he stepped to the side and reached out, grabbing one of the blankets. It was soft like the white baby blanket Lyra and Pan had liked so much but made to fit a double bed.

“Add that, too, if you don’t mind,” prompted Will, and once the man had: “Thanks.”

Once Will was back at his mum and Mary’s, Kirjava brushed between his ankles and laughed. “You know, they’re going to start recognizing you in the baby shops, too, with how often you’re there.”

“Better not,” murmured Will, a bit irritated by the entire ordeal. He didn’t like being noticed. He liked being able to come and go anonymously as he pleased. “Are we ready? Do you think Mary’s back?”

“In here!” shouted Mary from the downstairs office. Will lifted the bag and carried it back towards the office. Mary was typing away at her computer, an explosion of papers around her in a hectic array that always stressed Will out. He longed to tidy the area for her, but she steadfastly refused.

“We’re ready to go back,” said Will. Mary turned around to object, but Will beat her to it. “Yes, I checked my heartrate, my blood pressure, _and_ my blood sugar. I’ve found no evidence that there was long-term damage done by how long I was gone before. I feel just fine now. I think my mind just snapped me back because I was _exhausted_.”

Mary had been worried about Will. He’d slept for ten hours straight once he returned to his own body and she’d had a difficult time waking him. On Will’s end of it, it had been the deepest sleep he’d ever had, and when he’d roused, he felt perfectly fine. He did wonder if his body in Lyra’s world would be sore from all the manual labor, though.

“You shouldn’t be gone that long again.”

“I’ll try to take breaks,” he said, placating her.

“All right, well, let me finish this paragraph up and I’ll move my work upstairs so I can watch over you. We really ought to set a bed or a chaise lounge of some sort up in here…oh, here,” she passed him a thick envelope. Lyra’s name was on the outside.

Will stuffed the letter into his pocket, waited somewhat impatiently for Mary, and then they moved upstairs to the guest room. He settled into the bed as Mary checked her watch.

“What time shall I wake you if you haven’t come back?”

“In about six hours. I think if I space it right, I can come back here around dinner time, rest up, eat, and then go back for the night.”

“Stay _there_ for the night?” Mary clarified.

“Yeah. Then come back here early in the morning and stay ‘til lunch.” He didn’t tell her that he’d been tormented this morning thinking about Lyra and Pan alone in that shoebox of a boat on a pitch-black sea. He didn’t want to leave them alone all night again.

“Worth a try,” said Mary, in that tone that told Will she hoped it worked but she wasn’t certain.

It was getting almost frighteningly easy to find Lyra. He closed his eyes, unhooked his mind just a _bit_ , and then he was standing on a rocking boat in temperatures much colder than the home he’d just left.

“Will!” cried Lyra, thrilled. He turned. She was standing on the very edge of the boat handling the lines. A quick glance around the rest of the boat told Will Malcolm was down in the cabin. He felt a bit apprehensive.

“Where’s Malcolm?” he asked. He set his bag down. Kirjava jumped up onto the roof of the cabin area where Pantalaimon was resting.

“Making lunch,” said Lyra, and then she beamed proudly. “Turns out I’m a _much_ better sailor than I am a cook. I’m a natural, en’t I, Malcolm?”

She elevated her voice near the end so Malcolm could hear her from the cabin. A second later, he yelled back: “Too right!”

Will used the sparse knowledge he’d picked up from his lessons yesterday to help her, and by the time they were back on course and sailing fine, Malcolm was calling them down for lunch. Will took Lyra’s hand and helped her down into the cockpit after sharing a quick kiss. She held his hand tightly and leaned her head against his arm as they walked.

“Oh,” Lyra said, surprised. They ducked their heads and climbed down into the main room of the cabin, a delicious smell wafting over them at once. “That smells _great_.”

Malcolm set three full bowls of stew down expertly on a rickety table he’d pulled from somewhere. It was set up between the two adjacent sofas.

“Thank you, Lyra,” he smiled. “Hello, Will. Made it back okay?”

Will nodded. “Yeah, thanks. And thanks for lunch,” he added, going to sit beside Lyra in front of one of the steaming bowls. He hadn’t been that hungry before he smelled it, but now his stomach was growling.

He was glad to see that Lyra’s appetite was back. She ate with just as much enthusiasm as he did. About halfway through the meal, she set her spoon down and said: “I’m surprised by how good this is. I thought it’d be rubbish.”

Will, never having quite the same social tact that Lyra had, was surprised she’d said something like that to Malcolm. But Malcolm found it delightful and laughed.

“Where’d you learn how to cook, anyway?” wondered Lyra. “You eat in the dining hall just like I do at Jordan.”

“My mum. And a nun, Sister Fenella. My mum cooks at the inn my family runs, the Trout.”

Will looked over at Malcolm at once, recognition flowing down his spine with a shock. “In Wolvercote? On the Thames?”

Both Lyra and Malcolm looked at Will with surprise.

“Yes,” Malcolm said eagerly. He turned slightly to face Will entirely. “Is there a Trout Inn in your world?”

“Yes, in that same spot,” shared Will. “I’ve been there quite a few times. Mary loves it.”

Malcolm hooted, delighted. “Imagine that! Who owns it in your world? I don’t suppose there’s a Malcolm Polstead there, too?”

“Not that I know of,” said Will. “I don’t know who owns it.”

“I’d love to see it,” said Malcolm with relish.

“His world hasn’t got a Jordan College,” Lyra said, as if that settled the matter entirely. Will fought the urge to laugh, and when he and Malcolm glanced at each other, they both had to look to the side to keep from it.

“Now this stew is all right, but you haven’t _lived_ ‘til you’ve tried my mum’s…”

Will and Lyra listened with interest as Malcolm told them all about his childhood growing up at the inn. It was nice to hear about a childhood where the parents were parents. He told them about the Priory near the inn where he’d spent innumerable hours helping a nun named Sister Fenella with food prep and any other errand they could round up for him. Lyra, in particular, seemed to enjoy hearing about the nuns and Malcolm’s time with them. By the end of lunch, Lyra was leaning tiredly and contentedly against Will, Pantalaimon snoozing heavily in her lap. Will couldn’t remember the last time they’d eaten so much in one sitting.

“I should go check the sail trim,” Malcolm said finally.

He still had a bit of stew left, and Will’s bowl was clean, so he offered to go instead.

“No,” Malcolm said. His eyes flashed once to Lyra; she had her eyes closed now and was near sleep in Will’s arms. “You stay. I’ll go.”

Will didn’t want to disturb her either. “Okay.”

Before they left, Asta the ginger cat fussed over Pantalaimon, smoothing the fur between his eyes with her paw like a mother might. It was odd to Will. He and Kirjava exchanged a puzzled look as soon as the two had ascended to the deck.

Will pushed the table back so he could stretch his legs out and recline. Lyra snuggled closer to him and let out a deep, happy sigh. Will’s heart swelled in response.

“Oh, I picked something up for you,” he remembered.

“You’re always picking stuff up for me. How do you still have money?” muttered Lyra.

Kirjava had already hurried to grab the blanket he’d bought from the bag. She dragged it over to them and deposited it at Will’s feet. He undid the ribbon around it and shook it out: it was much roomier than he’d expected, and when he let it fall over him and Lyra, she gave a delighted laugh.

“Pan!” she called, amused. Pantalaimon was already hurrying off her lap and out from underneath the blanket to investigate. Will watched in amusement as Pantalaimon gave away Lyra’s fondness for the gift by rolling quite happily over the soft material where it puddled on the floor. And when Will looked back at Lyra, she was looking at him from beneath her eyelashes with a look so intense that—had they been somewhere with even a smidgen of privacy—he was certain she’d be pulling his clothes off right about now.

“So you like it, then,” he surmised, ignoring the way the back of his neck had gone hot in response to her look.

“I love it,” she said, her voice low. Will’s heart gave the impression of skipping beats. He had to look away or risk letting himself get swept away.

“Pan and I were just talking about one of these last night,” shared Lyra. “He badly wanted to ask you for one. And somehow you already knew.”

Will beamed, pleased. When he felt confident she probably wasn’t looking at him with such an enticing look any longer, he glanced back at her. Her smile widened in response to his. He reached up and cradled her cheek. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Though you really ought to stop spending money,” she added, a bit loftily, like she knew more about finances in his world than he did. Will sighed.

“Oh, I asked the alethiometer something,” whispered Lyra, her words softened with exhaustion once more. She slid down to take her place over his chest again. “Earlier. Something about the baby.”

Will stroked her hair back behind her ear so it was out of her face. “Yeah? What?”

“I asked it why the Church wanted to kill our baby…what the Church thought our baby would be…and it told me that the Church thought it would be the ‘lawless one’.”

“The Church thinks ‘the lawless one’ is the ‘antichrist’,” Pan added.

Will had never been religious, but he knew enough just from the media in his world to know what that meant. His heart sank. He wasn’t sure what to say, but he knew that something that was half Lyra could _never_ be evil like the Church was insinuating.

“That’s rubbish,” he finally said, his voice trembling with offense and anger. “That’s absolute _shit_.”

“Mmhmm,” she agreed tiredly.

He felt more and more furious the longer he sat there with that knowledge. To think that the Church had already charged their unborn child with a crime and condemned it to death before it’d even taken its first breath. To think they would be willing to kill _Lyra_ just to get rid of the child. _His_ child, _their_ child. He was shaking with rage. Right then, he wanted nothing more than to turn around and take the Church on himself.

But that would mean he’d have to push Lyra away because she was still draped over his chest, and he didn’t want to do that. She clearly felt the tension in his muscles and craned her head up to sleepily kiss his neck, his collarbone, his shoulder. She nuzzled her nose over his heart and hugged him tighter.

“It’s not true,” she told him softly.

“Of course it’s not true,” he agreed, a sharp edge still to his words. “They’re insane. They’re completely mad. They’re _corrupt_. Something’s got to be done—something must be done to—” she scooted up a bit so she could kiss the edge of his jaw, her fingers finding their way into his hair. His angry words crumbled in his mouth. He fell still and held her body to his as she kissed him, and Will felt his anger melting away so quickly that he was almost shaken by it. He was reminded, once again, the sort of control this woman had over him.

“We’ll do something,” she promised him, her voice full of steady conviction. “You and I, Will. They’re right in a way: this baby _will_ be their downfall. But it’s not because of anything the baby is going to do. It’s because _we’re_ doing to destroy them for what they were going to do to _us_. I won’t have my child hunted by the Church its entire life like I was. I _won’t_. And I know you won’t, either.”

He felt the same quiet, simmering rage that he knew she must’ve been feeling. He thought she was right. He could easily see them doing that and he was wholly prepared to take the entire Church on himself for even _thinking_ they’d hurt Lyra and the baby.

“Maybe your father was wrong,” Will said, his voice hardly above a whisper now. Something about the conversation seemed to call for secrecy. “He took the fight to the top, but maybe he should have started at the bottom.”

“Or maybe,” mused Lyra, “his destruction at the top is what had to happen in order for our destruction at the bottom to work.”

Will looked down at Lyra, and she leaned back and looked up at him, and when they met eyes, Will felt as if a thousand different thoughts and plans were flowing between them. There was perfect clarity. Perfect understanding. They would get her to safety, and they would make sure their baby was safe (however long that took), and then they would do what was right. And taking down the Church once and for all was right. Not only for them. Not only for Lyra’s world. But for their child. And wasn’t that what parents did? Shelter their children from harm? Take down anyone who might try to harm them?

Well, that was what _their child’s_ parents would do at any rate. Will would _never_ let his child feel cornered or hunted, or feel as if he (or she) had to take on the world just to survive. Never again.

“I love you,” said Lyra, but what Will heard was: _I trust you_.

He kissed the top of her head after she’d draped back over his chest. “I love _you_.”

He had two people to fight for and something to fight against.

* * *

 

Will found Malcolm sitting at the stern of the boat messing with the rudder (or was it the tiller? Will couldn’t keep them straight.)

“Any sign that we’re being followed?” greeted Will.

Malcolm shook his head, his eyes still on the lever-looking tool that Will knew helped steer the boat. “None at all, thankfully. Doesn’t mean they won’t catch up, though, if they’ve realized we changed course.”

Will walked over and sat beside him. Kirjava had stayed below with Pan, and Asta looked at Will curiously as if he were a foreign entity without his dæmon at his side. 

“How many days do you think it’ll take to get to Svalbard?”

“If we don’t run into any problems, I’d say it’s about an eight-day trip. So maybe seven more if we’re lucky.” Malcolm finished checking whatever it is he’d been checking and looked up at Will. “How’s she doing?”

Will assumed he meant medically. “Fine as far as I can tell. I’m a bit worried about the mold Pan swears he can smell, and the propane-heaters in such an enclosed space. They do run on propane, right? It looked like propane.”

“They run on tricarbane, but maybe that’s the same thing as propane in your world. There’s a low-oxygen gauge on the heater. It’ll shut itself off if the levels get low in the cabin,” he reassured Will. “I don’t think she slept well last night. I heard her and Pan talking every time I wandered down into the cabin.”

“I wondered,” said Will, thinking about how quickly she’d fallen asleep after lunch. “Well, she’ll be okay,” _I’ll be here tonight_ , “she’s Lyra.”

Asta spoke. “What’s the plan once she’s on Svalbard?”

“To keep her safe. Then, once the baby is here, to keep the baby safe, too.” It was only part of the plan, but it was the only part relevant to the question Asta and Malcolm were asking.

“Will you raise the child there?” asked Malcolm.

Will shook his head. “I imagine we’ll raise the child partly in this world somewhere and partly in mine. My world will be safer for it—no CCD—but I don’t know if the child could stay there all the time and Lyra certainly couldn’t. I think the world the child is born in will be the only world it can live in permanently. Unless it’s able to live just fine in both because it’s made from parents from both worlds…there’s still a lot we don’t know.”

He realized Malcolm had really been trying to ask him something else. “But you know you’ll always be on the run in this world. They’ll never stop—the CCD. They never stopped chasing after Lyra.”

“I do know that,” Will assured him. “We’ve got a plan.”

“Well, I’ll help in any way I can,” promised Malcolm. He stood up and walked over to the mainsail. Will could tell he meant it, but what he didn’t know was _why_. Why did this man act so…fatherly towards Lyra? Or perhaps brotherly—Will wasn’t sure how to explain it. He never got the feeling that Malcolm’s interest in Lyra was inappropriate in any way, but he did get the feeling that he cared deeply for her and that he’d do anything to protect her. But _why_?

“Did you see Lyra often when she was younger?” wondered Will. “Did you teach her and such?”

Malcolm didn’t glance around, but his hands slowed so that he was tying a knot at a much slower pace than he had been previously.

“I only taught her briefly when she was about eleven. Just for six weeks or so,” he answered. _But…_

Will waited.

“Do you remember the Priory I was telling you both about earlier? During lunch?” asked Malcolm.

“Yes.”

“Well, Lyra stayed there for a while when she was a baby. After the courts deemed Lord Asriel unfit and Mrs. Coulter refused to have anything to do with her. And I saw her all the time because I was there a lot. I loved her; she was such a clever, sweet baby. And…well, there was a massive flood, this awful, horrible man who wanted to hurt Lyra to get revenge on Mrs. Coulter, and I ended up taking Lyra from the flooded Priory to Lord Asriel in my canoe.”

Will blinked. It took him a moment to process all that; he hadn’t expected any of it. “You—took a baby on a canoe? During a flood?”

“Not alone. I had help. A girl who worked in the kitchens, my friend. We…it was a really horrible experience. And I guess I’ve always felt really protective of her since then, after all we went through. But she doesn’t remember any of it because she was only a baby. We dropped her off at Jordan to stay, and then I had to keep away from her for a while for safety’s sake, and by the time I enrolled at Jordan myself, she didn’t remember me at all.”

The sadness in Malcolm’s voice was palpable. Will had been half-convinced he was lying until he heard that.

“So Lyra doesn’t know about this?” clarified Will.

“No. I wanted to tell her when I taught her, but the Master and Hannah told me I shouldn’t, that it wasn’t the right time. It would start her asking _why_ the CCD was after her, and she still didn’t know who her real parents were, and it would just confuse everything. And then when she returned after all those things you two went through…well, it didn’t seem that important in the grand scheme of things, not with the stuff she’d just been through herself. So I just tried to keep an eye on her as she grew up just like I’ve always done. But I love her, Will, I do. I love her as if she were my own baby sister. I’d do anything for her. So when she came to me and asked me to take her here…well, it wouldn’t be the first time she and I made a perilous journey by boat, and oddly, I don’t think it’ll be the last.”

Will had to digest that for a while. He sat in the cold air and looked out at the passing expanse of indigo sea as he thought.

“You’re going to tell her, right?” Will asked. “I don’t like keeping things from her.”

“I am,” promised Malcolm. “I just haven’t found the right time. It’s not really something you just drop on somebody, is it? ‘Oh, good morning, did you sleep well? Yeah, oh, by the way: I carried you off in my canoe during a great flood when you were only a few months old to protect you from a horrible man— and the CCD— _and_ your own mother.’”

“To be fair,” said Will, “it’s not as if Lyra hasn’t heard worse. I think she’s pretty used to finding out surprises about her own past.”

Malcolm couldn’t argue with that. He went back to sailing, and Will went back to thinking, and as he did, he couldn’t help but marvel at all the people who had banded together around Lyra over the years. She hadn’t had parents, that was true, but she had never been without support and love. Iorek, the Gyptians, Serafina, Mary, Malcolm, Dr. Relf, _him_. Wherever she went, she inspired love. Was it something she got from her mother? Will knew firsthand how magnetic and charming Mrs. Coulter could be, how being around her once made you want to be by her always, and Lyra had that same sort of magnetism to her, but he felt like it was something different with Lyra. Something purer.

“Thank you again,” Will told Malcolm, breaking their comfortable silence. “For all you’ve done and all you’re doing.”

He wondered if anybody had ever thanked Malcolm before, but as Malcolm smiled brightly at Will, Will realized he probably hadn’t ever felt the need to be thanked.

“‘Course,” Malcolm said. “Grab that line, will you?”

Will rose and went to help Malcolm. The two men worked in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts but finding an easy camaraderie within each other.

* * *

 

As Will had suspected, Lyra took the news quite well. It was their fourth day at sea, and after Malcolm finished telling Lyra all about their shared past, she was full of excited questions.

“But what happened to Sister Fenella, the nun who took care of me before the flood? Where did Alice end up? What form did Pantalaimon take first, do you know? What did he like to be the most? Did I cry a lot? How come I’ve never heard of Bonnie—Bonvil—Bonneville? What happened with Bonneville and my mother, did you ever figure it out?” And then, with the most baffled expression yet: “My father held me? And showed me the stars? You’re sure?”

Of all the insane things Malcolm had told them, it was Lord Asriel’s affection for baby Lyra that had surprised her the most. She seemed quite okay with accepting the odd stories about fairies that Will was almost certain were nothing but a fever dream from the tired eleven-year-old’s mind, but hearing that her father appeared to care for her like a father ought to? That seemed to be a bit too much for her to wrap her head around.

Malcolm calmly repeated the entire story about Lord Asriel showing up at the Inn and demanding that Malcolm get him into the Priory to see baby Lyra. He told her how Lord Asriel had convinced Sister Fenella to hand her over through the window, how Asriel’s dæmon, Stelmaria, had stood up to get a good look at Lyra, how Lord Asriel had talked sweetly to her and walked her up and down the garden, how Lyra hadn’t cried once. And all the while, Lyra listened to the story again with the same baffled expression she’d worn the first time.

“I think he would’ve raised you himself if the court had let him,” Malcolm said confidently. “He would’ve taken you to the north with him and raised you properly. But you were safer at Jordan where the Church couldn’t get hold of you. They never would’ve stopped chasing after you if it weren’t for your scholastic sanctuary, and you couldn’t get that with Lord Asriel.”

Lyra shook her head after a moment. “That’s too much. I can’t…I can’t wrap my head around that. It doesn’t fit with what I know about him.”

“That’s what he was like _then_ , anyway,” Malcolm shrugged. “I hear he changed over the years. And he must’ve changed to have done what he did to Alice’s cousin—Roger, I mean. The man I knew…I don’t think he could’ve done that.”

Malcolm answered all of Lyra’s many questions. He seemed just as excited to get to answer them as Lyra was to ask them. Will quietly took over monitoring the boat so they could talk, sensing that this conversation was important to both of them. Malcolm told her all about the younger versions of her parents, what she was like as a baby ( _sweet and clever_ , Malcolm had said decisively), and the startling news of where her alethiometer had come from. Lyra was more touched to hear about that than anything else. When Will passed by them to check the rudder, he saw Lyra throw her arms around Malcolm in a hug.

“Oh, the Master never said, I had _no idea_ that’s where my alethiometer came from!” she cried. “You can’t imagine how many times it’s saved my life, Dr. Pol—Malcolm! How many times it’s saved the lives of people I love! I wouldn’t be _me_ without my alethiometer—I wouldn’t. If you hadn’t found it and tucked it in with my blankets when you dropped me off at Jordan…I might never have had it and then I probably wouldn’t even be here right now.”

“I didn’t know how important it would end up being to you when I gave it to you—I just wanted to give you a gift and it seemed as nice as any—but you can’t imagine how thrilled I was when Hannah told me you were taking up alethiometry underneath her.”

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at,” said Lyra at once, fierce and bright-eyed when Will turned around to look at her. “Well, that and lying, I guess.”

Will thought that there were a great number of things Lyra was good at, but he knew it wasn’t his place to correct her.

“That’s how I feel about boating,” agreed Malcolm.

“Well you _must_ be good at it to have done all that when you were only eleven. _And_ you kept a baby alive the entire time, and that seems difficult, too, especially when you’re being chased after.”

“I’ve done few things harder,” he nodded.

Later that night, after Will went home quickly to eat and stretch his legs, he returned to find the sea quieter than it’d been the entire trip thus far. Malcolm was in the minuscule kitchen area making a cup of tea at the small stove. He waved; Will waved back.

“Everything still okay?” Will checked.

Malcolm nodded. “Still no sign of anyone following us. The traffic got denser as we passed by the Trondheim port, but Lyra stayed below and nobody looked twice our way.” He gestured back at the bedroom. “Staying below made her sick again so she’s lying down.”

Pleased to know they weren’t being followed, Will nodded back. “I’m going to go check on Lyra and Pan and then I’ll come up and help so you can take a break.”

“Brilliant,” said Malcolm, relieved. “I feel a bit dead on my feet.”

His hand shook as he lifted his mug to take a sip. Will felt a sting of sympathy for him and vowed to come up as soon as possible to help.

Will opened the hatch that led to the bedroom. Lyra’s face lit up brilliantly at the sight of him; he rarely felt so honored. She did look a bit peaky, but had Will not known she’d felt poorly, he never would’ve noticed: she crawled to the end of the bed and tugged Will up and into her embrace at once.

“You’re back earlier than you were last night,” she muttered into his shoulder.

“I didn’t need as long in my own world to recover.”

It was true. He seemed to bounce back quicker and quicker and he found himself able to stay longer and longer with each day that passed.

“Wonder why that is?” mused Lyra, and then: “No, I don’t want to question it. I’m just glad.”

“Me too,” he agreed, kissing her hair. He leaned back after sharing a quick kiss with her. “Malcolm said you weren’t feeling well?”

She frowned. “No. Being stuck down here makes me awfully seasick.”

“It’s horrible,” agreed Pantalaimon faintly. He was half-buried under her pillow; Kirjava was nuzzling against him and purring in concern.

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep? I’m going up to take over for a bit so Malcolm can rest, but I’ll come join you as soon as we switch back out.”

“No,” Lyra said, and Pantalaimon stood suddenly as if following a shared thought. She pulled the soft blanket Will had gotten for her up and wrapped it around her shoulders like a cloak. “We want to come up with you. It’s dark and nobody’s following us. We could use the fresh air.”

Will certainly wasn’t going to argue. And she was right: the fresh air would do her good. So they bundled up with coats, hats, and gloves and went up together. She and Pantalaimon got comfortable on one of the benches in the cockpit while Malcolm left to get some much-needed rest. Will made sure the boat was still going steady in the right direction and then he joined her underneath the warm blanket. It was still a bit chilly with the wet, frigid air blowing against them as they moved across the water, but Lyra moved to sit in his lap, and Will wrapped his arms tightly around her from beneath the blanket, and that helped things.

“Did your mum write me back?” asked Lyra.

“Yeah, it’s in my bag. The envelope’s really thick, too…I think she put baby photos of me in with the letter.”

Lyra was beyond delighted to hear that. She probably would’ve run down to get the letter that second were they not as cozy as they were. But she didn’t want to move and Will didn’t, either. At their feet, halfway under the blankets, Pantalaimon and Kirjava were so close together that it was difficult to tell in the dark where one ended and the other began.

“I wish I had photos from when I was a baby. We won’t even know if our baby looks like me,” realized Lyra.

“Sure we will. You’re here, aren’t you?” Will reminded her. “We’ll just hold it up beside you.”

“Yeah, but babies and kids look quite different from how they look when they’re adults. Everybody says I look just like my mother, but I didn’t think I did when I was little.”

“You did favor her even then,” Will said, thinking about a specific memory he had of Mrs. Coulter in that cave when she and Lyra had looked just alike. “Anyway, maybe Malcolm remembers what you looked like. He can tell you if our baby looks like baby-you.”

“Oh, right,” Lyra agreed, pleased. “I never knew anybody before who really loved me when I was a baby, except Ma Costa, but I was only a newborn then, and I imagine I had little personality at that time. It’s funny to think about Dr. Polstead knowing me back then. Dr. Polstead once rocked me to sleep, and fed me, and kept me warm, and I was ever so difficult to him when I was younger. I used to trick him into letting me climb trees during our lessons instead of actually trying to learn anything, just ‘cause I wanted to, and he would let me do whatever I wanted, really.”

Will laughed. He was certain Lyra gave those Scholars a run for their money—he’d been told many hilarious stories from Malcolm to back that suspicion up, too. “If you ask Malcolm, Lord Asriel ‘really loved you’ when you were a baby,” he reminded her softly.

She was quiet for a long while after that comment. Will tilted her chin up gently so he could examine her pale eyes. She appeared to be thinking hard.

“It’s funny to me that _this_ is the part that confuses you the most. For me? The fairy story. I’m not sure I believe it.”

Lyra gave him a sardonic look. “Land of the dead? Sure. Different worlds? Great. A knife that can cut between them? Perfect—handy, even. Elephant-like creatures that get around using wheels? Understandable. Witches, armored bears? Natural. But _fairies_? Well, that’s where William Parry draws the line.”

Will couldn’t help but laugh. He kissed her deeply, ardently, and she soon laughed with him.

“No, you’re right,” agreed Will. “But I _lived through_ those strange experiences. It’s hard to believe the things Malcolm told me because I didn’t see them firsthand and they’re so…strange.”

“What’s odder than babynapping fairies is my dad being a proper dad.” She laid her head back against his chest, but Will got the feeling it was to hide her expression more than to cuddle. “I sort of wish he’d never told me that. You were right before. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

Will wasn’t sure what to say to that, but he could feel how hurt she was, and he wasn’t sure what the cause was. He held her closer to his body and kissed her temple. He stroked her spine and rubbed his foot against Pantalaimon gently, enough that Pan arched quite happily into his touch and he felt Lyra shiver pleasantly in his arms.

“What is it?” Will wondered, his voice soft.

She turned and hid her face into his shirt. Her words were muffled. “It just…well, I’ve got to wonder, don’t I? I’ve got to wonder what it was about _me_ —who I turned out to be—that he hated. ‘Cause if he loved the idea of me when I was a baby…if he cared about me then…what is it that he didn’t like later on?”

Will’s heart had sunk with each and every word she said. He didn’t know what to do but hold her tighter.

“See, I always thought he just didn’t want a child at all. I had this whole scene in my head where my mother tells him that she’s pregnant and he’s so angry because he doesn’t _want_ to be a dad or have a baby, and then when I’m born, he doesn’t want to hold me ‘cause he doesn’t care for babies or being a father. And that was all right with me. Because some people just don’t want to have kids. Some people just don’t want to be parents. And that’s not my fault. But if he didn’t hate the idea of being a dad…if he didn’t hate the idea of having a daughter in general…that just must mean he hated _me_. I never considered that before.”

“Nobody could hate you,” whispered Will, his heart bruised from her pain.

“Try telling that to my parents. To the _Church_ , matter of fact.”

“Your parents didn’t hate you. Think of what they did in the end. You’re the one who told me about that. You don’t die for somebody you hate.”

“And maybe he wasn’t dying for me at all. Maybe he was just dying to further his cause.” She shook her head. She gripped him so tightly that it hurt, but he didn’t care if it made her feel safer, more secure. “The things he did and the way he sometimes treated me…Will, I could never do that to our baby. I know that without a doubt in my heart and our baby isn’t even alive yet. How is it that I love _this baby_ —” she grabbed Will’s hand beneath the blankets and moved it over to rest on her swollen stomach— “more than my father ever loved me?”

He didn’t know, and he desperately wished that he did. He wanted so terribly to have the answers for her, to explain away behaviors that he himself just couldn’t understand. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of somebody not loving Lyra. It was unnatural to him, eerie, _wrong_.

“I don’t know,” he said softly, honestly. “But whatever the reason, it was never any fault of yours. You only have to look at all the people who _chose_ to be your family to know that. And I chose you. I _choose_ you. And this.” He stroked his thumb against her stomach, his hand still held in place by Lyra’s.

She pressed her face into his neck. He felt her eyelids flutter against his skin as she presumably blinked back tears.

“Well I already knew that _you_ loved me,” she murmured.

He smiled sadly. “Well,” he shot back, mimicking the tone she’d used, “I can only tell you what’s in my heart, not what was in anybody else’s.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“You _suppose_?” he said softly, teasingly.

“Yes. I _suppose_.”

“Well, if you _suppose_ …”

She let out a heavy sigh. The burst of warm air against his bare neck made him shiver.

“You know what I wish?” she asked.

He waited patiently.

“I wish that, for once, it could be as easy as this all the time. We could wake up tomorrow on Svalbard, and no one would ever come looking for us or our baby, and our baby could be born healthy and happy, and we could find that door in only a few days, and then we could go between our worlds—back and forth, back and forth—easily and as often as we want, making wonderful lives for ourselves in each world, with no one to threaten or harm us, nothing to run from or fight against…” she trailed off.

“But…” he prompted for her. He heard it lurking there at the end of her speech.

“But that’s not the universe we live in. That’s not the lives we have. That’s not who we are,” she said, coming to her own conclusion.

He showed her that he agreed and understood by tipping her chin up and kissing her lips. He meant it to only be one, but it turned into two, then three, then four. Five, six, seven. Eight…

“But you know what else?” Will said, pulling back just enough to speak. In the dim, yellow light from the naphtha lamps, he could see dampness still lingering in her pale eyelashes.

“What?” she asked.

“I think you’d get terribly bored if we had that sort of easy life.”

She laughed like he knew she would. She shoved his shoulder.

“Would not!”

“Would _so_ ,” he countered calmly, amused. “You’d go looking for trouble, you would.”

“Wouldn’t.”

“ _Would_.”

She leaned in and kissed him this time, but hers was deeper than Will’s had been, more consuming. She reached up and held his face in her hands, twisting in his lap to face him fully, her lips parting against his. He set one hand against the small of her back to hold her close and his left went into her soft, fragrant hair—Kirjava was purring at his feet so deeply that he could feel the vibrations in his bones—Lyra made a pleased, breathless sort of sound as he deepened their kiss, one he liked very much—white light was building behind his eyes…

Light?

He was warm from head to toe, but then he felt a flash of terror flow to him from Kirjava.

“Lyra!” Pantalaimon cried, and when Will and Lyra sprang apart, they were blinded by an impossibly bright light. Lyra winced and covered her eyes instinctively. Will shut his. From the distance, a foghorn sounded.

Will was on his feet at once, squinting and peering through the bright light to try and make sense of where the other boat was. He didn’t know if they were in the boat’s way; was the light coming at them from the side of the vessel or the front? Where had it come from? From what he could see, it was _massive_. Not nearly as big as a cruise ship in his world, but at least ten times the size of  _The Acorn_ , though it was difficult to tell with the spotlight blinding him.

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?” Will demanded. The light was disorientating him. It had made a giant white spot appear in his vision. He tripped climbing out of the cockpit and sprawled painfully on the deck, slamming his knee hard into the fiberglass edge.

“I think—”

“It’s headed right at us,” Pantalaimon said, his voice panicky and high.

Will had a thousand thoughts rushing through his brain. There were a dozen things he needed to be doing, but for a second that felt like an hour, all he could do was lie there where he’d fallen.

“Kirjava—” he didn’t need to finish. Kirjava shot past him towards the cabin to get Malcolm as Will stood up. He and Lyra rushed into action at once. She jumped up to adjust the lines so the sail could be brought to the other side while Will leapt over the cockpit to the aft of the boat, where the tiller was.

“Move the tiller when I say!” cried Lyra.

The water beneath them began to churn and rock as the larger boat approached. The spotlight was beginning to make keeping his eyes open impossible. Through his half-closed eyes, he saw Lyra struggling with all her might to adjust the lines so she could pull the mainsail towards the center of the boat. Something was going wrong—he didn’t know what, but she couldn’t get the sail to move, and without it moved to the center before the tiller was pulled, Will didn’t know what would happen; his understanding of sailing was still rudimentary at best.

Freezing spray was flying up and hitting Will in the eyes now, stinging and salty, and still, the boat was approaching—

“I can’t get it—I don’t know why it won’t come undone—!” Lyra’s voice shook. He could hardly hear her beneath the roaring of the approaching boat and the angry waves splashing up against the edge of the little sailboat. It was rocking violently now, enough that Will had to reach out and grab onto the rail to keep from falling.

“Switch! Switch with me!” Will ordered. He leapt unsteadily towards where Lyra was; her fingers were purple from the cold. Will grabbed the lines from her as she moved to man the tiller.  

“Lyra!” Malcolm shouted, panicked. Will couldn’t see where he was. “Hurry, hurry, jibe! Will—jibe-ho!”

But Will hadn’t moved the mainsail to the center yet, only neither Lyra nor Malcolm could see that with the furious waves crashing up and into the boat and the bright light blinding them. Lyra, probably assuming Malcolm could see the sails and following his order, pushed the tiller away from the mainsail. And the lines whipped in Will’s hands—the mainsail slammed across to the other side of the boat—and Will was whacked so hard in his head by the boom of the sail that he was knocked off his feet.

A loud, incessant ringing was all he could hear. He could feel pain throbbing down into his teeth, his spine, his hips. He could smell blood—sharp and metallic—and he didn’t know if his sudden urge to vomit was from his head injury or the way the sailboat was turning sharply to the left…

Underneath the ringing, he heard a horrible crash and screaming. Malcolm’s voice—Lyra’s—Lyra. Pantalaimon. Lyra. Pantalaimon…

* * *

 

It happened so quickly that Lyra had no idea what was happening as it did. One moment she was at the stern and the next she was thrown onto the deck of the boat as something collided with the mast.

There was a horrible splintering _boom!_ followed quickly by a cracking noise that made Lyra cry out. A moment later, the mast was blown from the boat; it crashed starboard side, splashing down into the water so fast and powerfully that it nearly made the boat capsize. Lines and cables snaked and jerked over the deck as the mainsail went down with it. They whipped over and around Lyra: Lyra grabbed desperately onto the railing closest to her, terrified they’d wrap around her leg and drag her down with them. She could hear things crashing in the cabin as the boat continued leaning, pinned down from the weight of the fallen mast.

She was certain the other boat was going to continue for them and push right over them, sending them down to the depths of the ocean, but nothing else happened.

Her heart pounded. Her head throbbed from where her forehead had smacked the deck. But the bright light was ebbing away, and the churning of the waves was calming, and they weren’t yet dead.

“Lyra! Lyra!”

Lyra held onto the rail and pushed herself upright. Her head spun. “Pantalaimon!”

He threw himself at her, a soaking wet ball of quivering fur. Lyra clutched him to her heart and gasped as she opened her eyes and took in the destruction around them. The boat was leaning so far to the right that the naphtha lanterns she and Will had been using just minutes prior had rolled down the boat and crashed into the water. Cables and lines draped over everything, like exposed veins of some horrid, mangled thing. The mast had been severed from the boat and was now half submerged in the sea, the other half still lying on the boat and threatening to capsize it. She saw a flash of ginger hair in the moonlight: Malcolm was slowly climbing to his feet, his expression one of horror. Asta was already jumping to examine the destroyed mast. And where were Will and Kirjava?

“Where are they?” Lyra breathed, her chest seizing with panic. She was up and on her feet immediately. She stepped over the cables and lines and splintered wood and metal, her heart thudding so hard it was making her sick. Where were they?

“There!” Pantalaimon cried. He shot out of Lyra’s arms and flew so quickly over the deck that he appeared to slither. He came to a stop on the other side of the stump of the destroyed mast. Lyra let out an audible cry. She sank down to her knees at once, her hands pressing to Will’s face. For a horrible, unlivable moment, she thought he was dead. There was blood saturating his hair: it gleamed in the light from the moon, sticky and dark. Kirjava was motionless a few feet away. But then she gently turned his face to lean over him, to see if she could feel his breath against her cheek, and he stirred slightly, his eyes moving behind his closed lids.

“Will, don’t move,” she said quickly. “You hit your head. There’s blood. I’m going to look at it. Don’t move!”

He’d begun to turn his head towards her voice. She steadied his face, stopping his movement.

“Hang on!” she ordered again. He fell still this time. He groaned softly in pain as she swept his hair back and found the source of the blood. She was finding it difficult to see anything in the moonlight.

“I need a light,” she told Pantalaimon. He’d been nudging Kirjava, but at that, he took off down into the slanted cabin, returning seconds later with a torch. Lyra turned it on and moved it to Will’s hair. She shined the light around and moved his hair about until she found the cut. She lifted the edge of her sea-soaked skirt up and brought the material over to dab at his wound so she could see it clearer. As soon as the blood had been wiped away, it returned, gushing and bright red, but she relaxed.

“It en’t deep,” she said, her voice still quivering out of shock. “It’s just there on the surface of your scalp. What do I do now? How do I know if you’ve got serious trauma? Tell me three animals that start with the letter E.”

He made an odd, huffing sound, and at first, Lyra thought it was a groan of pain, but then she realized he was laughing at her.

“It en’t funny!” she exclaimed, horrified and offended by his laughter, still shaken to her core. “You could be seriously hurt! Three animals!”

“Elephant, eel, eagle,” he muttered. His hand came up to rub at his bloody forehead. His eyes opened a second later, dark and lovely.

Lyra was unsure. “Does an eel count as an animal?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” he challenged. He winced as he pressed over his own wound, testing the depth with his fingers.

She observed him uncertainly. “You could’ve said emu. That would have been better.”

“Here, shine that light in my eyes. Watch my pupils. What do they do?” he said.

She obliged at once, shining the torch at his right eye first and then this left. “Your pupils get small.”

“Good. Are they the same size? Right and left?”

Lyra peered hard into his eyes, studying each serious and intently. She sat back after a moment. “Yes.”

“Okay. Now pull the light away. Can you see enough without it to see them now?”

She could, but only just. “Yeah, mostly.”

“Have they both gone back to a normal size? Do they look even?”

She tilted his head some so the faint light coming from the cabin could illuminate his face a bit more.

“Yes,” she decided.

He sat up slowly. She let him because she assumed he’d just had her perform some sort of doctor test and he’d passed it.

“Here,” she said quickly, removing the waist-tie from her dress. She folded it over a couple times and then reached up to press it to his wound. He held it tightly there and reached out to grab something for purchase; Lyra quickly gave him her arm and helped him stand up. They observed the chaos around them in dismay.

“Oh!” Malcolm said suddenly, catching sight of Will’s blood. He must not have seen him fall. He rushed over at once. “Will, the mast didn’t—?”

“No, I got hit by the boom,” Will admitted. Lyra realized Malcolm had thought the mast had slammed into Will’s head when it fell and she shivered. That would have been much worse.

Malcolm looked at her next, anxious. “And you’re—?”

Lyra interrupted Malcolm. “I’m fine. I’m going to take him down to rest. I’ll be right back and we can…we can…” she surveyed the wreckage, her heart sinking. They could…what? “Fix this.”

“Take as long as you need. I’ve got it under control up here.”

He gave her a bright, reassuring smile, but she got the feeling he was only doing that for her benefit. She couldn’t fret over the boat now, though; she had to make sure Will was okay before she could focus on anything else. She turned, helping Will down the stairs to the cabin. Pantalaimon was half-dragging Kirjava down after them. She was weak.

“I’m fine,” Will tried to protest as she eased him down on the bed.

“You’re not. Hush.”

“I _am_. I need to help.”

“You need to hush,” she corrected. She sat on her legs beside him and took the wet cloth Pantalaimon handed her. She moved the tie from her dress and mopped again at his pulsing wound. “I should clean this.”

“There’s a first aid kit in your rolling bag.”

Lyra nodded at Pantalaimon, who fled to find it. She pressed the cloth firmly to his head to try and staunch the bleeding while they waited.

“I really am okay,” Will repeated. He reached up to move her hand from his wound, but Lyra smacked his hand away. “Scalp wounds bleed horribly. They’re known for it.”

“And I’ll believe that you’re okay once you’re not bleeding anymore,” said Lyra, half her mind on Will’s wound from the subtle knife that had bled, and bled, and bled.

“What about you?” asked Will. His gaze was probing. “Nothing hit you, right?”

“No,” she said shortly. The last thing he needed to do was fixate on her and dismiss his own injuries.

“You didn’t fall down or anything?”

“No,” she lied. She pulled the cloth back and leaned in to examine his injury. It began gushing blood again, but it seemed to take it longer to do so this time. Lyra hoped that meant it was clotting.

“Here,” Pantalaimon greeted. He lugged the first aid bag up onto the bed. Lyra found a bottle of the solution Will had used to clean her foot out with and gently rinsed his wound with it, careful to catch all the excess with gauze, just as he’d done with her foot. After that, she messily applied some ointment to it. Will was a surprisingly good patient the entire time; he lay there patiently and didn’t complain once, not even when Lyra accidentally dropped a glob of ointment near his eye.

“Okay,” he said, “Thanks, Dr. Silvertongue.”

She wasn’t sure if she should let him sit up yet. She set her hand gently on the center of his chest just in case he tried and she had to shove him back down. “Are you _really_ okay? You’re not just telling me that?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Are _you_ really okay? Or are _you_ just telling me that?”

She twisted her mouth unhappily. He reached up and covered her hand with his. She caved.

“All right, I’m _really_ okay, but I did fall down.”

He sat up. She didn’t think to stop him. He had perfected the calm, unaffected look of a doctor questioning a patient, but Lyra could tell from the way his eyes narrowed just slightly that he was concerned.

“How hard? How did you fall? Did you hit anything?”

It was all a blur. She was having a difficult time remembering. “I think it was when the other boat collided with the mast or whatever they did…I just got knocked off balance, that’s all. I sort of…” _got thrown_ was probably the correct way to explain it, but that sounded worse than it actually was… “fell a bit.”

“You fell a bit.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Just a bit.”

“Right.”

“How exactly did you ‘fall a bit’?”

“You know, like…” Lyra rose up onto her knees and then dramatically tumbled over onto the mattress. She lifted her head afterwards and looked at Will. “Like that.”

“A bit like that?”

“A bit.”

He moved up and leaned over her, pressing his lips to hers quickly. “Then perhaps we should check you out a bit.”

Despite the low, smooth quality of his voice, she knew it was really Dr. Parry talking to her and not Will, and she knew he was probably right, but now that he was okay, they needed to get back on the deck to see what they could do to help. That thought made her stomach drop again. Any warmth Will had infused in her heart was gone, pushed out by a thousand different worries. She sat up, pushing Will up with her.

“Okay,” she agreed. “You can check me out all you like, but _after_ we go help Malcolm.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but Lyra shook her head once, resolute. And Lyra could tell he knew she was right.

She leaned over to briefly stroke Kirjava’s head—pleased beyond relief that she and Will were all right—and then Lyra, Will, and their dæmons walked up and out into the wreckage of the night. The cold air bit hard into them in their soaked clothing. Lyra knew from the moment she saw Malcolm that things were not okay. Despite the cheerful façade he’d forced earlier to keep her from worrying, they were in trouble.

“What do we do?” Will asked at once. He pushed up the sleeves of his wet shirt, indifferent to the small trickle of blood trailing down the side of his face. Lyra felt her heart throb with a tangle of admiration and arousal.

Malcolm’s expression was forlorn as he surveyed the wreckage. He had been cutting steadily through one of the tangled lines draped over the hull; even Asta was helping by chewing through ropes.

“We have to get the mast into the water as soon as possible.” He pointed at the starboard side. Lyra saw what he meant at once: if the boat tilted any further, it would certainly capsize.

“Get it in the water as in throw it overboard and let it sink?” Lyra asked, surprised. “We can’t reattach it someway?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No. It’s gone, I’m afraid. We’ll have to make do without it.”

Dread seeped into her gut. “But how can we sail without a sail?”

“We’ll find a way. There’s always a way. We’ll rig something—we’ve got a bit of fuel for the backup engine, too—it’ll be all right,” he said, but again Lyra got the feeling that he didn’t really believe what he was saying. She got the feeling he was only saying that to comfort her. She wanted to stamp and yell _I’m not a baby!,_ but maybe being strong for her made _him_ feel better, so she let him be. He looked like he would’ve cried if she pushed him, so tender were his emotions. He stared at his destroyed boat like one might look at a suffering lover.

“All right,” she said skeptically instead. She walked over to the starboard side where Will was. She leaned over to grab underneath the severed, fallen mast, and as she went to heave it up to try and shove it over the side of the tilted boat, both Malcolm's and Will’s intermingled cries of indignation made her pause. She let her hands slide off the mast and turned to look at them, annoyed.

“What?! We’re sending this over, you said so!”

“Yeah but _you_ —”

“We have to cut the lines and cables first, don’t we?” asked Will, interrupting Malcolm.

Malcolm nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we do, or else they could catch on our legs or arms and pull us overboard. Dangerous stuff, Lyra, very dangerous.”

She glowered darkly at them. “I know when people are lying to me, you know.”

“We really _do_ need to cut these,” countered Will calmly.

“You just don’t want me lifting it!” Lyra accused. “I’m _fine_! I hardly fell! My knees aren’t even bruised! You’re the one bleeding, not me!”

“Women aren’t supposed to lift very heavy things when they’re pregnant,” Malcolm worried. When Lyra glowered fiercely at him, he looked nervously at Will for backup. “Right, Will? You’re a doctor. Right? I swear I read that somewhere. I swear that’s true…”

“No, he’s right,” Will said. Lyra huffed. “I’m serious. They really do recommend that women don’t lift anything extremely heavy during pregnancy. Your center of gravity shifts when you’re pregnant, for one, which leads to more falls, which can cause placental abruptions—among many other things—and your ligaments also loosen so you can severely strain your back and—”

“Fine, Dr. Parry,” she said flatly. She didn’t like feeling useless. “What _can_ I do?”

“Something far more important, actually,” Malcolm said, grave. Lyra looked at him. “If you would, could you use your alethiometer and find out what just happened?”

Lyra blinked. “We know what just happened. We wrecked.”

“No,” Malcolm said, frowning. “We were deliberately crashed into. That boat snuck up on us on purpose. They collided with us on _purpose_. And what I can’t figure out is why. If it was agents of the CCD—which I’m certain that it was—and they wanted to kill us, why didn’t they just crush this boat beneath theirs? If they wanted Lyra, why didn’t they just destroy our boat and kidnap her? We need to know what their intentions were and what they’ve got planned next. That’s the most important thing.”

Lyra turned and looked up at the empty space above them where the mainsail used to be. “I think it’s pretty obvious their intention is to have us starve and freeze to death here in the middle of the ocean. They probably want it to look like we just had a boating accident and died of natural causes.”

“That very well may be what their intentions were,” Malcolm agreed. “But we need to know for certain, don’t we?”

She supposed he was right about that. “Okay, I’ll ask.”

She left to get her alethiometer. While she was in the cabin, she changed into a set of dry clothes and outerwear and grabbed a couple towels for Will and Malcolm. She gave them each two to wrap around themselves and sat in the partially-flooded cockpit, her numbed fingers turning the wheels to the correct symbols for her first question. She’d meant to ask the one, get her answer, and then go help Will and Malcolm, but one question turned into five, and five turned into ten, and the next thing she knew, the boat was rising up beneath her. She heard a loud _splash!_ She fell out of her trance and turned to see the broken mast sinking down into the depths of the Norwegian Sea. She pushed her alethiometer into the bag at her waist and walked over to stand between the two men, watching with them as the mast disappeared from sight entirely. Lyra felt as if her heart was sinking with it. For a minute or so, nobody said anything. Then Malcolm looked down at his feet and turned.

“I’m going to change and drink something warm. You should too, Will, before you get frostbitten.”

Lyra leaned against Will as they walked down into the cabin. Malcolm shut the cabin door after them to conserve heat—there was no sail to watch anymore, after all, and he’d already dropped the anchor to keep them from drifting—and Lyra and Will headed into the bedroom, shutting themselves in while Will changed in there and Malcolm changed in the main area of the cabin.

Will’s hands were trembling and clumsy from the cold, so Lyra helped him undress. He put on two layers of clothing and climbed beneath the covers. Kirjava and Pantalaimon were cocooned in a cotton towel, trying to both dry and keep each other warm, and Lyra was quick to join Will beneath the covers in the hopes it’d warm him quicker.

And it was the last thing she wanted—the very last thing—but she said: “You should go back to your world, Will.”

He protested at once. He pressed his cold nose against her neck and held her.

“I mean it. You’re freezing and injured here. Go home. Go eat a hot meal with your mum. Go get hamburgers. Go sleep in a warm, proper bed. You can’t do anything to help our situation right now, anyway, and I hate seeing you miserable.”

“I’m not miserable. I’m just cold. I’ll warm up. I’m not going anywhere ‘til I make sure you’re all right.”

Realizing arguing would be futile on that front, Lyra focused on warming him. She pressed her body against his and held him, her mind spinning with the things her alethiometer had told her. She knew she ought to have waited until they were all three together again until she told Will, but the time seemed right now, with them snuggled up beneath the covers.

“My alethiometer told me the boat belonged to a group of men who work for the CCD. I tried to ask what it is they do exactly, but the only answer I got was murder, but maybe it really is as simple as that: they take out the people the Church deems a threat.”

“How’d they find us?”

“They had people watching just off the port of Nesna. They recognized the boat; the Church put out some sort of notice about it once they realized we’d gone from Oxford. The men on the boat turned all their lights off and followed us at a distance in the dark.”

“And was their intention what you thought?” asked Will.

“Yes. And my alethiometer said it would’ve worked, too. The sailboat has a backup engine, but it guzzles fuel, and we’ve only got a bit on board, and that same fuel is what we’ve been using to power the heater. Even if we used every bit of our fuel, we wouldn’t make it to Svalbard before we ran out; we’d run out about a day short of the port and likely freeze to death. It would appear to all—except the most skeptical—as an unhappy accident.”

Will’s expression was grave, but Lyra thought he could probably tell there was some good news lurking behind the bad. “But…?”

“But they don’t know about your ability to travel,” she said, pleased. “They don’t know that you can bring _things_ from your world. You can bring us more fuel, Will. I even asked the alethiometer to be sure, and it said you could.”

He relaxed in her arms. The tension that’d made a home in his muscles vacated. “And if we had unlimited fuel, we could get to Svalbard, even without the sail?”

“Yes. It’ll take much longer, but it’ll get us there.” She was confident about that.

He sat up. Lyra shivered at once: she hadn’t realized how cold she’d been until she was properly warm for the first time in hours, and now the lack of his body heat was jarring.

“I need you to ask it something else.”

She pulled her alethiometer out and sat up beside him. She waited expectantly.

“Ask if your world’s tricarbane is the same as my world’s propane.”

It was tricky to ask. It took her nearly ten minutes to figure out the right combination of symbols to frame the question right in her mind. Finally, it gave her an affirmative answer. She looked up and nodded at Will. He leaned in and kissed her forehead, relieved.

“Then I’ll make sure you’re okay and I’ll go to my world and get what we need.”

“And eat and sleep,” added Lyra sternly. She grabbed his hand, unfurled his fingers, and pressed his palm over her heart. “See? I’m alive. Everything’s fine.” She thought about how cold it was getting, though. “Maybe you could bring some more blankets back with you, too.”

Pantalaimon sighed from his spot near the end of the bed. Lyra understood. Their blanket Will had gotten them—the impossibly warm and soft one—was currently in a soaked ball in the cockpit. It’d never dry properly in this climate. It would be frozen solid first.

He promised her he’d bring back more blankets, but he wasn’t soothed by just the beating of her heart beneath his hand. He shined a torch into her eyes, checked her temperature, counted her pulse at her wrist, and then dug that Doppler machine out. Lyra felt her heart squeeze with fear for the first few seconds he spent searching for that familiar sound, but then it filled the cabin, fast and healthy and familiar.

“See?” repeated Lyra, delighted. She hadn’t even realized she was worried about it ‘til relief filled her, warm and heavy. “We’re fine.”

He watched the baby’s heartbeat on the machine for a few minutes longer to be sure, and once he affirmed it was normal, he shut the machine off and pulled the blankets back up over Lyra.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised. Lyra tilted her chin up imploringly. His lips were warm and soft as they pressed against hers in a kiss.

He mumbled a goodbye against her cheek, kissed her once more, and then shut his eyes. He hovered above her, not moving beyond breathing for nearly a full minute. Lyra watched, confused, as his eyelids fluttered back open.

“Did you forget something?”

“No. I can’t do it.”

Lyra’s breath lodged somewhere between her ribs. “What? What do you mean?”

He sat up and rubbed just above his forehead, where his wound was. He winced and dropped his hand a second afterwards as if he’d forgotten it was there. “I can’t go back. It’s not working. My head is _throbbing_ —I can’t think around the pain.”

“Okay, well—well,” Lyra sat up, too. “Maybe you just need to rest. And then you’ll just go back naturally once you’re not trying to force yourself.”

He looked troubled. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

Lyra tried not to panic. “Well, try it. It won’t hurt to try. Lie back down and just close your eyes. I’ll lie with you.”

He didn’t protest at all as she tugged him back down to lie beside her. She covered them both with the blankets and fitted her body against his. She sent a thought to Pan, and a moment later, he’d curled up at Will’s ankles. She caressed the length of Will’s back, up and down, up and down, and his body finally relaxed. His breathing evened somewhat. But he remained in her arms, solid and _there_.

“If I can’t go back and get the supplies—”

“Shush. Don’t think like that. It’s going to be okay. You hit your head really hard…I bet you just need to recover a bit, that’s all. You said your head hurts, right? Maybe you can’t do it because you can’t focus. When my head hurts, I can’t think about anything really, except how badly it hurts. I expect it’s like that.”

In reality, she had no idea what the cause could be. But they had bigger problems than their shipwreck. If Will couldn’t get back _ever_ …

Her stomach plummeted at the thought. She had to take a deep breath to calm herself.

“You rest. Maybe I’m distracting you.” She extracted herself from his arms. “I’m going to go see if there’s anything I can do to help with the boat. I’ll come back to check on you in a bit. _Rest_.”

She had to force herself to appear calm and unrushed as she climbed from the bed. She and Pantalaimon closed the hatch to the bedroom behind them as they exited. And as soon as they were out of Will’s sight, Lyra yanked her alethiometer from the small bag at her waist, her heart pounding incessantly with worry.

“Everything all right?”

Lyra looked up briefly. Malcolm had rigged a clothesline across the small cabin area and was hanging his wet clothes to dry in front of the heater. Lyra pressed her lips into a firm line and began turning the wheels of her alethiometer.

“I’m not sure yet,” she said honestly. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

He walked over to stand beside her, his curious eyes on the alethiometer’s face. Lyra was so concerned about Will—about what would happen to him if he couldn’t ever get back to his own body—that she couldn’t seem to sink into the state of mind that she needed. She looked up, took a deep breath, and then tried again. _Frame the question…wild man, anchor, compass…_

Her eyes followed the hand around the face as it swung from symbol to symbol, her mind absorbing the meaning and storing it away as further information flowed to her. She asked several follow-up questions, her heart keeping up its never-ending pounding, and then she shook and fell out of the trance.

“Well?” wondered Malcolm. “Does it say if that boat was from the CCD? Did it say what they were trying to do?”

Realizing she’d never told him the alethiometer’s first answers, and that he wasn’t yet aware of the more recent problem, Lyra backtracked. “It was the CCD. They spotted us as we passed by a Norroway port. They were hoping to shipwreck us—and ultimately kill us—so that it looked like an accident. They _meant_ to destroy the boat and leave us.”

He looked off towards Asta—curled in front of the heater—as he thought. Lyra continued.

“We’ve got a more pressing problem than the CCD at the moment, though.”

Malcolm turned to look at her at once. He arched an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s wrong?”

Lyra set her alethiometer back in her bag. “Will can’t go back to his own body ‘til this one is healed well enough. And if he can’t go back to his own body, he’ll die. And we’ll die.”

There was a brief flash of panic in Malcolm’s eyes. “Yes, that is definitely pressing.”

“So we’ve got to help Will get better. That’s the most important thing.”

Malcolm was frowning. “Lyra, I don’t have enough fuel for the backup engine to get us all the way to Svalbard. If we’d shipwrecked closer, yes, we’d be fine. But it’d take every bit of it just to keep us warm enough for a couple days, and then what? We’re still at least three or four days away—and that’s at normal speed. The backup engine will go half as fast as our sails were taking us.”

Lyra reached down and lifted Pantalaimon up. He’d been to check on Kirjava and Will and had just returned. Lyra could tell from the stress he was feeling that they were still here and unable to return home.

“We don’t need to worry about the fuel because Will and Kirjava can bring fuel back with them once Will’s well enough to go back to his own world. Enough fuel to get us to Svalbard,” Pantalaimon said. “But not if he doesn’t get better.”

“We’ll use what we’ve got now to keep warm,” said Lyra. She met Malcolm’s eyes. “That’s all we can do.”

She knew he didn’t feel good about this—putting all their lives on something as poorly understood as Will’s traveling. But they didn’t have another choice. The alethiometer had told her that much. Nothing was more important to Lyra than keeping Will safe, and anyway, they couldn’t survive without him.

She wondered if Malcolm trusted her. Maybe he still saw her as a helpless infant or a troublesome child and wouldn’t take her advice seriously. But after just a moment of contemplation, he nodded.

“We’ve got to clean the deck up, then. Will and I cut the mainsail and jib free before we pushed the mast and such overboard; maybe we can find a way to rig them up to create a cover for the deck to help insulate us from the cold. I bet we can use what’s left of the lines to secure it...” he trailed off, his mind visibly churning with ideas. “Asta?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” his dæmon said, answering something he hadn’t verbalized.  

He was rummaging through the overhead storage cupboards running along the entire perimeter of the main cabin now, pulling various bins and boxes out, mumbling to himself as he did. It comforted Lyra immensely to see him working towards some sort of plan; for a moment, she felt as safe watching him gather tools in his arms as she felt at Jordan College. She must have trusted him, too.

“I’ll come up and help, but first I’m going to go tell Will what my alethiometer said,” Lyra said.

“Make sure you wear your gloves,” Malcolm told her. “We’ll be doing a lot of tying and lifting and such. It won’t be possible to do if your hands are numb.”

Lyra nodded. With a plan in place, Lyra crouched back through the opening to the bedroom to check on Will.


	5. the perfect creature rarely seen

Standing on a dry, cracked hill slope beneath a peeling paperbark tree was a wisp of light.

Neither natural nor usual of the area, it persisted day in and day out, driving endemic wildlife from the area—all except the desert elephants. The Torra Conservatory game guard had noticed on multiple occasions the black rhinos, lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and most of the smaller animals avoiding the area around the strange light, though he hadn’t noticed the light itself for weeks on end, and it was only at night that he first saw it. It was dim and seemed to move around, though it never left the general area, and sometimes, he thought perhaps it looked humanoid in shape.

He was both intrigued by it and frightened of it. He took to using his days off to scope out the area, binoculars in hand, body safe inside his truck, his dæmon perched cautiously on the vehicle roof to keep watch. He witnessed the desert elephants flock to the area on and off as if having been told by other elephants that it was there, and they reacted with pure curiosity, reaching their trunks out to the light, standing around for minutes at a time.

He couldn’t make sense of it. He had been working as a game guard for three decades now, and up until this occasion, he had never seen anything that left him feeling so shaken. There was an underlying mysticism to the light that disturbed him and made him spend more time at church than he otherwise would have. He didn’t know what the light was, but he knew it wasn’t from this world, and he wasn’t comfortable dealing with matters of a spiritual nature.

Still, he couldn’t stop watching it. He couldn’t leave it be. And after nearly a month of waiting for the light to leave the area, he realized the light was there for a reason. It was guarding something.

It was nothing more than a sliver of color hovering in the air right in front of the paperbark tree. In fact, it was so difficult to see that he wasn’t surprised that it’d taken him this long to spot it. And, like the figure of light, it was so unlike anything he had ever seen before that he feared it, distrusted it. He found that, depending on his angle, he could _see_ things within the sliver: blowing grasslands not unlike the ones surrounding him, though when he saw that, there was heavy rain falling on them, and that hadn’t happened _here_ in years; a bright red truck rattling past, though it was much different from the anbaric trucks here and made a much louder sound; people, once: a man in an unfamiliar uniform holding a type of weapon he’d never seen before, a type of massive gun that shot and just kept shooting without cessation.

He could have told someone about it, but he didn’t.

He could have gone closer, but he didn’t.

He didn’t know what they were—the figure of light or the sliver in the air—but he had the all-consuming feeling that they were important, that he was meant to find them, that he was meant to _watch_.

He didn’t know what he was watching for, but he assumed he’d know when he saw it.

* * *

 

“Hmm…”

Malcolm darted his eyes from his hand of cards to the space between him and Lyra. He eyed the objects amassed there, then looked at Lyra, and then looked back at his cards. She watched him inscrutably, hardly even blinking, waiting for him to make a decision. At their sides, their dæmons were watching each other with narrowed eyes, tails swishing softly against the floor of the cockpit where they were all four sitting.

For a moment, there was no sound except for the hard wind whistling past the makeshift tent above them. Then Malcolm smiled.

“Raise,” he decided. He dug down into his jacket pocket and pulled out a silver coin. He held it up. “Ten-piece coin from Terra de Pogo.”

Lyra smiled brightly. “Oh, it’s colorful! I’ve always wanted one of those!” Without pause, she reached down into the bag at her side, pulling out something at random. She inspected it before placing it in the pot: it was a tiny copper replica of a saber-tooth tiger she’d gotten during a science course she’d taken abroad in New Denmark. “I’ll call.” She placed the tiny tiger down beside the Terra de Pogo currency.

Malcolm turned to confer quietly with Asta before they began the draw. Lyra didn’t even look at Pantalaimon; she didn’t need to. One quick brush of his fur against her arm meant _exchange two cards_ , no movement meant _exchange one_ , and an exaggerated yawn meant _exchange nothing_.

At her side, Pan yawned.

Lyra looked at her cards. She had a pair of nines. There was a slim chance she could move her hand up to three of a kind if she got rid of one card and was lucky enough to get the right card in exchange, but Pantalaimon was right: it would be better to act confident like they had a royal flush than make Malcolm think they had a low hand.

“I’ll trade in for two,” decided Malcolm.

Lyra suppressed her pleased smile. At her side, Pantalaimon yawned again. Asta was beginning to look agitated.

“I’ll stand pat,” said Lyra flatly.

This made Malcolm hesitate. He looked at Asta again, and she looked at him, and then they both look back at Lyra and Pantalaimon. Lyra didn’t budge. After a pause, he hesitantly discarded two of his cards and drew two more. His face fell at once, though he rearranged his expression quickly enough. Lyra looked down at her cards before he looked up so he’d think she missed that.

“I’ll check,” Malcolm hedged, watching Lyra closely now.

Pantalaimon shuffled. Lyra reached into her bag again. She set her favorite pen in the middle.

Malcolm chewed his lip nervously. “I’ll…” Asta edged closer to Pantalaimon and whispered something. Lyra got the gist of it—Asta was trying to get information from him— and Pantalaimon responded by looking off towards the sea as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

“I’ll fold,” Malcolm finally said, dejected. He set his cards down in surrender. Lyra fell into giggles at once, and she was laughing so hard that she only barely managed to set her hand down.

Malcolm—Dr. Polstead—was outraged. “A pair?! A _pair_?!”

Lyra laughed harder. She wrapped her arms around her swollen stomach and felt tears prick her eyes.

“I thought you had at least a straight flush! I had three of a kind! Three _tens_!” he exclaimed.

She felt herself nearly wee on accident from the force of her laughter and became abruptly somber. Her laughter died at once. _That_ was new. She squeezed her legs together, embarrassed and horrified by what had nearly happened, blood flowing to her cheeks. It wasn’t quite as hilarious after that, though Pantalaimon was still chuckling, and Asta had stormed off a few feet away in a joking huff.

“You’ve got to have confidence, Malcolm, even when you have no reason to,” coached Lyra.

Malcolm pushed the pot over towards her with a shake of his head. “How’d you learn to play that well, anyway?”

“I lived with the Gyptians for a spell a few years back. I was seeing one, an old friend, and he taught me. I beat _all_ his friends in their big tournament,” she bragged. And then, just in case he didn’t know: “Nobody’s as good at card games as Gyptians.”

“This actually isn’t the first time in my life I’ve learned that lesson,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “Had I known you were trained with Gyptians, I would never have agreed to play you.”

“Yes you would have,” she decided.

He grinned. “Yeah, I would’ve. Still fun. We needed the break.”

“Did we _ever_ ,” Lyra agreed wearily. They’d spent the entire morning fixing their deck tent. They’d spent nearly seven hours setting it up the first time, and only a day or so after that, a huge storm had blown through and nearly capsized their ship. The ship weathered it, and they hardly drifted from where they were anchored, but the makeshift tent had torn away. They’d spent all morning and afternoon rehanging it. Lyra’s fingers ached from all the sewing and tying, and her spine hurt from the lifting. It wasn’t anything too heavy—just the fabric of the mainsail and jib—but having her arms extended up for so long still strained her muscles enough to make her long for a hot bath.

Malcolm checked his watch. “I think it’s late enough to start lunch. What do you think?”

“I think I’m starving,” Lyra agreed. She pulled her items from the betting pot and pushed Malcolm’s back over to him. “I’m going to make sure Will’s napping like he’s supposed to be.”

“No, take it,” Malcolm protested, pushing his items back over to her. “You won it, fair and square.”

“No, you save it, ‘cause we can use it to play another round another time,” said Lyra.

“All right,” he relented, clearly seeing sense in that. He reached under the edge of the tent and pulled out the cold compress they’d left lying out in the frigid air. “Here you go, if he needs it.”

“Thanks,” she said.

She followed Pantalaimon down into the cabin, the compress cold and heavy in her palm. It was pleasantly warm down here thanks to the insulation the tent above provided. Lyra crouched through the opening to the bedroom and fell still at the edge of the bed. She dropped the compress down and set her hand on her hip sternly.

“Will.”

He looked up. He was meant to be sleeping—sleep was the only way his possible-concussion was going to be healed, he’d said that himself—but he wasn’t. He had one of his books from his bag opened and he was holding it above his face as he read. From Lyra’s spot, she could just make out the title: _Oxford Handbook of Obstetrics and Gynaecology._ He moved it to the side and met Lyra’s eyes. She held his gaze.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” she complained. 

“I’m feeling much better. My head’s not hurting or anything. I tried to nap again, honest, I did, but I’m just not tired.”

Pantalaimon carried the cold compress up and dropped it on Will’s forehead. Will pulled it off.

“Really, it’s fine.”

Pan moved the cold compress _back_. Will sighed. 

“Thanks,” he muttered dryly.

“Anytime,” Pan said.

Lyra crawled to the top of the bed and sat beside Will. She crossed her legs and leaned forward to pull the compress off so she could see his wound. She moved his hair out of the way gently and leaned in, squinting at the healing spot. It was completely scabbed over now and looked much less inflamed.

“Your head looks good,” she decided. “But you’re not supposed to be doing things that strain your brain, remember? Medical books probably do that, right?”

“Not really, but I’m only scaring myself anyway,” he said. He set the book to the side. Lyra reached out for it, but he caught her hand. “You don’t want to do that.”

She scowled. “Yes, I do.” She pulled the book over into her lap and opened it. He was on chapter 6: labour and delivery. The chapter opened to ‘post-partum haemorrahage’, complete with a section of unpleasant statistics in bold-print and a disturbing image. She promptly shut the book, her heart inching down steadily. “No, you’re right, I don’t.”

He took the book back gently. “Sorry.”

“No, you warned me. That’s my fault.”

“I guess that’s true,” he said. She smiled half-heartedly in response. Silence trickled over them, but when he set a tentative hand on her thigh, she slid down to curl up in his arms.

“That won’t happen to you. Don’t worry about it,” he murmured.

But of course she was going to worry about it. Her stomach seemed to increase in size substantially every week. It was impossible now for her to look at herself without realizing that she was really, truly _pregnant_ , that there was a baby inside her, that that baby would eventually have to come _out_. And she’d be stuck in a cottage on Svalbard when it did. She may or may not have Will there with her. She might end up having to give birth alone, with only Pan there to help her, and she had no idea if he’d feel her labor pains, too, and if he did, _he_ wouldn’t be much help, either.

She tried to tell herself there was no use fretting over that yet. She should worry first about Will getting home safely, and then she should worry about them making it to Svalbard, and _then_ she could worry about childbirth. But seeing that book made the worries come back, fresh and potent.

“I’m scared,” she admitted quietly.

“I know. Me too.” He kissed the side of her face and stroked her hair back. “I wish you had a proper midwife instead of me.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m so relieved that I have you. You’re the only doctor I’ve ever trusted—the only one I would ever trust. I’m not worried that _you’re_ my doctor: I’m worried that you won’t be there when the baby comes, that I’ll have to do it alone, that something will go wrong and the baby will die or I’ll die or we’ll _both_ —”

“That _won’t_ happen. I swear it. I’m going to get more control over all of this before then; I won’t leave you alone like that, I promise.”

He meant every word of it. And he was Will, so she decided to trust him. “I hope so ‘cause I wouldn’t have any idea what to do. I know I’ve done a great job taking care of you, but I’m _not_ Dr. Silvertongue.”

He laughed. “Oh, really?”

“Hush,” she laughed, certain he was thinking of yesterday when she’d accidentally knocked his scabbed wound open while cleaning it (she’d dropped the antiseptic bottle). He’d found it terribly funny, but Lyra had been beside herself with shame.

She leaned in now and kissed him with feather-light gentleness, her hand resting over his heart.

“Do you think you’ll be able to go back today?” she wondered. She didn’t say that she was worried about him, and he didn’t say that he was worried, either, but they both became quieter and more serious.

“I hope so. I don’t know how much longer…” he stopped. Lyra swallowed roughly. She brushed his hair back and then set her fingers against the stubble growing along his cheeks and chin.

“Well, let’s hope it’s soon. You said you’re feeling better, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. His eyes drifted shut as she continued caressing his face. “I feel like me. For a while I just felt wrong, you know, and my head hurt so terribly…” he stopped speaking as she brought her lips close to his. She kissed him again, delighting in the soft familiarity of his mouth. He reached up and buried his fingers in her hair, keeping her lips close to his so he could deepen the kiss. The enthusiasm he put into it told Lyra he really _was_ feeling better and more like himself, and that—plus his kiss—significantly cheered her up. She lay halfway on top of him and kissed him happily for as long as they liked, each caress of his hands against her skin thawing her nervous heart, each taste of his mouth draining the wounds every separation from him had caused. They were melted and melded, impassioned and solaced, their hearts pounding in time and their mouths at home. Lyra was startled out of her love-soaked haze by a little jump from Will; she lifted her head and looked down at him at once.

“What?” she wondered. She’d been stroking the skin of his chest, but something about the way he jumped told her it wasn’t from anything she’d done.

“I—for a moment, I nearly went back, I think,” he realized, shaken. He scooted up a bit so he could sit up. Lyra moved off him to give him space. He ran a hand through his messy hair. “I think that was the first time my head’s been clear and painless since all this started, and I almost went back.”

Relief of the deepest sort pierced through Lyra. She leaned forward immediately, adrenaline coursing through her, eager to rise to the challenge. “Well, if the cure is that simple, come here ‘cause I can clear your mind even _better_ than that—”

He caught her shoulders as she leaned back over him. “No, hang on,” he said quietly, thoughtfully. He appeared to be a million miles away. Lyra watched him with bated breath, afraid to move too quickly or make any sounds. Pantalaimon—who had been curled up with Kirjava at the end of the bed—had frozen, too.

“I can hear Mary,” he said, surprised. His expression softened even more a moment later. “And my mum…”

She never thought she’d ever be so relieved to know he was about to leave her. “That’s got to be good, Will! That’s got to mean you’re getting closer to going back!”

“I’m going to try again…” he said. It was probably at least the twentieth time he’d said that during these past two days that he’d been stranded here, but this time, Lyra believed that he might actually do it. And not a moment too soon, either: they only had enough fuel left to heat the boat for maybe a day or so more, and her alethiometer told her they would be spotted soon if they didn’t move locations.

She watched his face go smooth and empty. It was different from the intense look of concentration he’d been wearing recently. She was certain it was a good sign. She waited, and waited, and waited…

“They’re _right there_ ,” he said, frustrated. He reached up and rubbed over his wound again. “They’re going to have to take me to hospital soon if I don’t wake, I heard them talking…”

Her relief turned into dread. She shook her head. “No, if you can hear them, you can go there. We’ve just got to…hey,” she realized, an idea crowding her head. “You remember when I asked my alethiometer how you could go back? And it said with recovery and rest?”

Will nodded. He still looked tormented.

“Well, ‘rest’ was a really loose translation because I wasn’t really sure what it was saying. It used the moon, and one of the meanings of the moon _is_ to rest or sleep, and that made sense. But what if it meant something different?”

He wasn’t following. She guessed anybody who didn’t know all the symbol meanings like the back of their hand would be lost, too.

“I don’t understand.”

“Okay, so,” she rose up to sit on her legs, excited by the sudden possibility that she’d cracked yet another code from alethiometer, “you know how every word sort of has its own layer of meaning, even when the overall meaning is the same? Like…if I said…‘oh, I’m _furious_ with you,’ that would mean something slightly different from ‘I’m irritated with you’. They both technically mean the same thing, but they’re different, too. Following?”

He nodded.

“The meaning of the moon that means ‘rest’ has a couple layers underneath that layer, different interpretations of the word. There’s rest as in sleep, which is pretty straight-forward. There’s rest as in taking a break from strenuous physical activity, which is _like_ sleep, but not quite the same, as they both call for different things. Then there’s rest as in emotional relief, like freeing yourself from an emotionally-draining situation, which is a little bit different yet. And then there’s rest like you’re…relaxing, lounging about, _basking_. Basking in moonlight, right?”

“Right…”

“Well, when I was kissing you, we were both sort of basking.”

He arched an eyebrow. She noticed his cheeks had pinked a bit, though. “I suppose.”

“I mean, we weren’t…it was just nice and lovely. Relaxing. Neither of us was trying to, you know, take it any further, so we were just living in that moment—that nice, lovely moment.”

He was catching on now. He sat up slightly. “So what you’re saying, basically, is that the secret to me going back is true love’s kiss.”

His flat tone told Lyra part of him found this ridiculous. She knew he was referencing fairytales, but she’d never been read any growing up and had only come across the phrase in reference during literature courses.

“I don’t guess it _has_ to be a kiss. If the weather were nice, maybe basking in the sun would do it,” she shrugged. She leaned in and brushed his hair back out of his eyes. “But, as we don’t have sun…”

He grinned. The sight of it was like balm to her anxiety. “If it works, it’s the best remedy there ever was.”

“Maybe our luck will hold out yet.”

So she lay back in his arms and kissed him again, her hands warming against his skin, his tracing up and down her body. She was unrushed and happy, so absorbed in her task that she completely forgot what they were ultimately trying to do. She’d reached up to carefully play with his hair, knowing too much might change the tone of their kissing, but also knowing how much he enjoyed it—

“Lyra, Will, lunch is—oh! Oh, sorry! Sorry!!”

The hatch slammed shut as quickly as it’d been opened. Lyra dropped her forehead against Will’s shoulder and sighed.

“So much for that,” Will said. He gathered her hair in his hands and pulled it over her shoulders, drawing his fingers through it gently to tidy it.

“Let’s try again after lunch. I’m starving and I know you must be, too.” Lyra sat up. She reached down and prodded gently at the shape of their dæmons curled up together beneath the blankets.

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” Kirjava muttered, resigned.

“I know,” Lyra reassured her. “I want to stay here, too.”

It was warm and lovely in Will’s arms, and their dæmons felt the same way, but lunch probably was important. 

Malcolm was beyond sheepish when they joined him in the main cabin. His cheeks and ears were red and he couldn’t seem to look them in the eyes.

“Sorry,” he blurted again.

“No, we weren’t…” she stopped. “It was _purposeful_ kissing. It had a purpose.”

He looked at Will, confused.

“Her alethiometer implied that it might be a way to help calm my mind enough to get me back to where I need to be,” explained Will.

“Ah,” nodded Malcolm as if that made complete sense.

Lyra sipped at her soup. “This is great, Malcolm.”

“Thanks—Sister Fenella’s recipe this time.” He sat across from them at the rickety table. “So— _was_ there any progress? With your traveling? And your…purposeful kissing?”

This time, he nearly snickered. Lyra made a face at him.

“Yeah, a bit,” Will answered. “My head’s feeling a lot better which is the main thing. I finally don’t have a headache today.”

Malcolm gestured at Lyra with a piece of bread. “And you think this might work? Kissing purposefully?”

“Oh, fine, I regret using that phrasing,” grumbled Lyra. Will and Malcolm laughed.  

“I’m aware of how ridiculous the idea sounds,” Will assured him.

Malcolm shook his head at once. “I don’t think it sounds ridiculous. All teasing aside, I think it makes sense. I mean, your first kiss—look what _that_ did to the universe and to Dust.”

Lyra supposed he had a point.

“It’s just a theory, anyway, but wouldn’t that be nice if it worked?” mused Lyra.

“It would,” agreed Malcolm, and he glanced over at their little heater and the tiny amount of fuel left beside it.

They ate quietly for a few more moments, and then Malcolm stood suddenly. “You know, I’ve had an idea.”

Will and Lyra exchanged a wary glance. They watched as Malcolm walked over to the tiny kitchen area and fumbled around inside one of the crowded cupboards. He came out holding a dusty bottle of Tokay.

“I bought this with my first proper paycheck,” he said proudly. He grabbed three plastic cups from the worktop and a corkscrew and carried them over to the table with the bottle. He set them down in front of them. “I always wanted to try it when I was a boy. Important men would order it at the Inn and it always looked so good. So I bought this but I never quite…I don’t know. The time never felt right to actually open it and drink it. So I saved it thinking I’d know when the time was right to drink it, and I think the time is right now.” He uncorked the wine. Lyra had to reach out and set her hand over the top of the cup that was hers as he went to pour, reminding him.

“Oh, right,” he said. “Sorry. More for Will and me, I guess.”

He filled his and Will’s cups. Will leaned over and peered into the golden contents. Kirjava—who’d been in front of the heater with Pantalaimon—leapt up into Will’s lap and leaned over the cup, sniffing at the liquid curiously.

“You’ve never had Tokay before?” guessed Malcolm.

Will shook his head. “No. It smells sweet.”

“It’s wonderful,” Malcolm gushed. “Try it.”

Lyra didn’t know if it was okay for him to drink—if it was safe. But he thought about it for a moment and seemed to decide that it was. He lifted the glass and took a sip. His eyes widened slightly a moment later. Kirjava leaned in and licked a bit off the top when he lowered the cup, and then promptly drank some more. Lyra and Pantalaimon laughed.

“That’s brilliant,” agreed Will.

Malcolm beamed. He nodded at Will’s cup. “Drink that and it’ll have your mind nice and calm.”

Lyra—having never seen Will drunk before and very curious about what it might look like—had no complaints about the plan. It made sense to her, and anyway, Will had said drinking was one of the ways he’d been able to make himself travel when he first started this process. Maybe it would help him again. So she leaned against his arm, ate, and chatted as he worked his way through his Tokay. Malcolm drank most of his, but not all, explaining that being drunk at sea was never the best plan of action for the only sailor on board. He filled Will’s cup a third time—by this point, Will was becoming extremely cuddly, much to Lyra’s delight—and pulled out the Poker cards from before. Lyra showed off a bit in front of Will, winning the first two games with finesse, but to be fair, Will’s focus wasn’t on her Poker abilities so much as her hair. He was blatantly enamored with it and kept pulling his fingers through it, watching the way the light from the cabin windows caught it, verbalizing comments about its softness in her ear every now and then in a sleepy, content voice. Kirjava was curled up around Pantalaimon and kept grooming his paws for him, but he seemed quite all right with resting there happily and letting her keep at it.

Lyra got bored with Poker after winning again, and Will was becoming a bit _too_ cuddly, so she tugged his arm so he’d stand and thanked Malcolm for dinner.

“Wish us luck,” she said to Malcolm, nodding at Will. He certainly _looked_ far away: his eyes were distant and peaceful.

“I won’t bother you this time,” Malcolm promised.

Lyra winked jokingly. Malcolm laughed. Asta helped Pantalaimon half-carry Kirjava to the bedroom. Will crawled up to the top of the bed, reached for the medical text he’d been looking at before, and then hardly seemed to noticed when Lyra pulled it from his hands.

“No thinking. No studying.”

He made a noncommittal sound. Lyra lay beside him and carefully pulled him into her embrace so his head was resting on her chest and her fingers could pull gently through his hair. She was mindful of his wound all the while, paying close attention to the pattern of his deep, even breathing, the way he threw his leg over to intertwine with hers, the way Kirjava curled up between her ankles, her fur lovely and soft against Lyra’s skin. The moment felt so tender and quiet that Lyra didn’t want to say a word about anything. So she didn’t. She breathed, and held him, and listened to him breathe with her. She felt this moment was impossibly precious: Will, vulnerable and soft, letting _her_ take care of _him_ totally and completely.

“I love you,” he said.

“Shh.”

“I do.”

“I know.”

“You don’t, though.”

“I _do_.”

He whispered something that made her blush. She patted his chest gently. “Shh,” she reminded him again.

She had been right before: there were many moments lovely enough to bask in. It didn’t _have_ to be kissing. They were at that point now, and Lyra knew they were because there was nothing she would have changed, nothing at all. She was beyond peaceful: she was serene. And Will looked utterly unburdened, and that was something she saw so rarely that it was a sight to behold.

She could sense a thought Pantalaimon was thinking towards her. _They’re going to leave now_ , he realized, and Lyra had only just realized it, too. _Good_ , she thought, but both she and Pan shared a moment of deep sadness despite that. Seconds later, Will’s weight was gone from her body, and her arms were empty, and both he and Kirjava were gone.

“I hate it,” said Lyra to Pan, her voice thick. She sat up and took a deep breath against the suffocating sadness threatening to overtake her. She wrapped her arms over her stomach.

“I do, too,” he whispered back. He flowed up into her lap. Lyra set a hand on his fur.

“Not long now,” she forced herself to say briskly. “We’ll find the door and we’ll _never_ have to suffer through this again. When he has to go back to his world, we’ll be able to go, too.”

But there were so many unknowns. Before she could even hope to be with him again— _really_ be with him—she had to make it to Svalbard, and stay out of the CCD’s grasps, and survive childbirth…and before all that, she had to keep from freezing to death on this boat.

“I hope he’s able to make it back soon,” she said, but she remembered how long he’d been gone the very first time he ever stayed away from his own body for a long time. A week. They couldn’t last a week.

Pan was thinking the same. “He’s got better control over it now,” he reminded Lyra.

“Yeah,” she said, but she was worried.

* * *

 

They ran out of fuel two days after he returned back to his own world. Around the same time, Lyra started coughing nonstop at night.

“Well,” said Malcolm, standing lost in the main cabin, the empty tricarbane canister in his hands. He had just poured the last of it into the heater. He seemed less optimistic than he’d been yesterday when he’d sworn that Will would be back soon. “Hopefully he’ll come back today. But just in case, I’m going to go up and pack some towels around the few gaps in the cockpit tent to try and minimize the cold air seeping in.”

Lyra stood. “I’ll help.”

They filled every gap with any sort of fabric they could spare. They hung coverings over the windows. They ran the heater only at night, and in brief stints, to conserve what fuel they had left. But by the end of that week, the heater was almost out, the frigid air from outside was beginning to steal in, and Lyra was coughing during the daytime, too, with an intensity that left her lightheaded. It didn’t help that the season was changing rapidly. Every day they floated out here brought them closer to full-blown winter. Lyra was starting to think she’d made a mistake. She had led them astray; she should’ve told Malcolm to use all the fuel to shoot them as close to Svalbard as they could get. Maybe now they would die, and it’d be all her fault.

And maybe Will would never come back.

Maybe his head injury had broken some part of his mind he used to see her, some part that couldn’t ever be repaired.

Maybe she would freeze to death out here, or get captured by the CCD and—but she stopped there. She hadn’t yet forgotten the things they had planned for her, the horrible things her alethiometer had suggested, and at the thought of them, her eyes burned with frightened tears again. She didn’t like being frightened. She didn’t feel like _Lyra_.

By the fifth night without Will there, it was so cold in the cabin that Lyra shivered all night long. Pantalaimon draped himself over her neck to try and keep them warm, and she had every blanket possible on top of her, but her teeth chattered and her hands were so cold she could hardly move her fingers. Each time she coughed, she felt heavy pain in her chest, and the cold air tore at her throat. She asked her alethiometer over and over if he would come back, but all it would say was _yes, soon_ , but soon wasn’t soon enough.

She was constantly aware of how vulnerable they were. She was constantly aware that, at any moment, someone from the Church could decide to come check the boat, to make sure they were dead—or kill them—or capture them.

“I think we need to think about a plan B,” Malcolm finally decided.

Lyra sat up, bringing the blankets with her. Her nose was so cold that she didn’t know it was running until Malcolm handed her a tissue.

“There’s a plan B?” she asked, surprised. She accepted the tissue with numb hands.

Malcolm smiled. It was weak, but it was a smile. “There’s _always_ a plan B.”

They bundled up in every layer of clothing they could pile on. Stepping out of the cockpit tent and onto the back of the deck felt like being slapped in the face; the wind was fierce and icy, and it brought tears to her eyes at once. When she coughed, her breath tumbled out of her in thick, white clouds, and the glacial air felt like knives in her throat.

“Ideally, we’d craft a makeshift sail, but we don’t have anything to craft a mast with,” said Malcolm. “But these bits here, while not sturdy or tall enough to use as a mast, could be used as paddles.”

Lyra picked up the rough chunk of wood he was indicating. It was _just_ long enough to reach the water, but only if somebody leaned uncomfortably over the side of the boat. “Row? _This_?” she looked around at the boat. It had looked tiny the entire trip, but suddenly, it looked colossal.

“I didn’t say it’d be easy,” he said. He looked as pale and unwell as Lyra felt.  

“Of course not. What ever is?” asked Lyra, and it was then that the tears from cold turned into a different sort. She stood there, the wind whipping painfully against her face, the piece of the broken sailboat in her hands, and thought it had been over a decade since she’d felt this low. She was cold and exhausted, and her chest and throat hurt, and she had no idea if trying to row _this_ for hours in temperatures this cold—against waves this strong—would hurt her baby. Maybe she came all this way for nothing: maybe she’d end up hurting herself enough to harm the child, anyway. But she didn’t have a choice. _They_ didn’t have a choice. And Malcolm never would’ve suggested it if they had another option; he never would’ve suggested that _she_ help if he could’ve done it himself, and she knew that, and that upset her even more. When he stepped over and reached out, pulling her tentatively into his embrace, his arms as strong and compassionate as a father’s might have felt had Lyra ever felt a father’s embrace, she felt a wave of sorrow overtake her. He cradled her while she cried, and she _hated_ so much that she was, and she wanted to stop it, but she was so frightened of so many things that she wouldn’t even know where to begin to fight the feeling. She had never felt so weak.

Pantalaimon fled to her arms as soon as she stepped back from Malcolm’s embrace. Pan rubbed his face against the numb skin of her cheek, murmuring: ‘Don’t do it, let’s wait just a bit longer, they’re going to come back…’

But she couldn’t just sit around waiting to be saved. She had to _do something._ And she couldn’t see another plan but this one.

“All right,” she told Malcolm. Her tears felt like they might be freezing against her cheeks. She didn’t even know if it was truly cold enough for that, but it felt like it. “What’s our plan?”

He took her back down into the cabin and showed her his satellite map. He pointed at a port closest to them at the very top of Norroway.

“That’s our closest bet. It will still take us hours and hours if it even works at all.”

She nodded. Her emotions felt as numb as her skin. “Okay.”

He caught her hand as she turned to walk wearily to the deck. His eyes were wide and pained. He glanced once at her middle and then looked back at her face. “Lyra. I don’t know if—”

“I know,” she interrupted him, her voice tight and sharp. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

And she turned and headed back up the stairs to the cockpit so he wouldn’t see the tears capsizing her eyelashes.

* * *

 

After a quick rowing lesson, and before they began, Malcolm said: “We could always try to make SOS calls—”

“No,” she said at once, her voice coming out like a whip. She realized she was shaking. “I can’t let them…Malcolm, I’d rather freeze here than let myself get captured by the CCD, and I guarantee they’re monitoring the radios.”

He shook his head sadly. “ _What_ did your alethiometer tell you they had planned, Lyra?”

But she refused to answer, refused to talk about it. Not even to him.

At first, as they began rowing, she thought maybe it wasn’t so bad. Her chest burned under her armpit where she had it pressed against the edge of the boat, and each deep swipe of the paddle against the water made her arms ache, and she had to muffle her frequent coughing attacks into Pan’s fur every few minutes, but the boat seemed eager enough to move, and Malcolm was more than adept at steering them. Lyra focused on making every stroke count: she didn’t worry about the direction at all and focused on propelling them forward as hard and as smoothly as possible, using every muscle she had in the process so that she could feel the soreness radiating down to her legs after the first half-hour. She found herself out of breath quickly, and each inhalation filled her chest with stabbing pain, but when she looked at Malcolm, he didn’t seem to be as bad off, so she assumed it was just from her lack of expertise. She would press past it.

“Keep going,” Malcolm encouraged every few minutes. He was starting to sound winded now, too, and Lyra could feel her pulse pounding hard in her head. The waves made everything harder. “We’re making good progress. You’re doing great. Keep going.”

Asta kept watch at the bow, calling out orders every now and then, while Pantalaimon stayed tucked around Lyra’s neck, harassing her about drinking water every ten minutes or so. But they were nearly out of that, too, and she wanted to preserve it. She only gave into him a couple times.

Her arms were quivering after an hour of hard, nonstop rowing. Her chest ached with a pain that brought tears to her eyes. She could hardly see through the freezing seaspray that kept blowing into her eyes. The sky was angry and grey, though the air felt too cold for a storm. Her muscles were so cramped that she had no idea whether the discomfort in her abdomen was from natural muscle strain or something else, something worse, but it’s not as if she could do anything about it anyway. She had no idea how long they kept on after that, but the sky grew darker still.

Right when she was certain she couldn’t go on another moment, she felt the air change beside her. She glanced to her left. And the sight of the snow goose surprised her so much that she dropped the makeshift paddle down into the water at once.

“Kaisa!” Pantalaimon cried, breathless with relief. He leaped over to the snow goose as soon as he landed on the frosted deck. Pantalaimon rubbed against his feathers with delight, relief coming out of him in high-pitched whines, his relief intermingled with Lyra’s, though Lyra was so tired she could do little but smile weakly at the dæmon.

“I’ve been looking all over the oceans for you,” Kaisa said urgently. He walked over and stood just in front of Lyra, looking hard at her half-opened eyes (she was becoming so dizzy she could hardly see straight), careful not to touch her. “You didn’t tell Serafina you were leaving so soon. We would have helped you. We’ve been so worried, quick, they’re only a little ways back, you must get your things and you must come with us. The CCD has sent agents out to recover your bodies. We shall make sure they have nothing to find.”

Lyra felt dazed. She stood at once to go get her rolling bag, the bag with all their supplies, but she stumbled as soon as she did, intense pain flooding from her back down into her hips. She caught herself against the side of the ship.

“I’ll go, I’ll go,” Pantalaimon told her quickly. “Asta, please, help me.”

Asta was already headed towards him. The two dæmons fled down into the cabin to get Lyra’s supplies and whatever else of use they could cram into the bag from the ship. Kaisa hopped closer to Lyra, worried.

“Sit back down,” he told her. She made no conscious decision to listen, but her legs folded beneath her despite that. He looked over at the man. “Malcolm Polstead? Stop rowing. You’re being rescued.”

“By—who—how do you know my name?”

“Put the paddle down.” There was a dull _clunk_ against the deck. Lyra’s eyes had drifted shut. Kaisa continued. “I know your name because Farder Coram has spoken of you before on many different occasions. I am Serafina Pekkala’s dæmon. Farder Coram was once Serafina’s lover.”

“Right,” Malcolm said, though he still sounded baffled. “And how are we being rescued?”

“By air,” said Kaisa. “I suggest you go bundle up even more.”

Lyra wasn’t really sure what happened after that point. She checked that her alethiometer was safe in the bag at her waist—she felt Malcolm carefully drape blankets around her shoulders—she felt Serafina’s soft skin as she pulled Lyra into a hug—and then she and Pan were flying, the icy air tearing at their skin. It seemed to break through her exhausted haze.

“Serafina,” said Lyra. She felt the witch’s warm body beneath her arms. She tightened her hold on her waist and shook with hysterical relief. “Oh, Serafina, I thought that was the end.”

“Not as long as I’m here,” Serafina said, her voice soft and melodic above the wind.

She rested her cheek between Serafina’s shoulder blades and held on tight. Part of her worried that she was dreaming, but that dream was still better than the reality she was leaving.

* * *

 

“Lyra,” she heard. “Lyra, sit up. Drink this.”

She knew the smell of Serafina’s hair anywhere. Woodsy, herbal, comforting. She sat up slowly, wincing as she did. She felt as if a car from Will’s world had slammed into her, though wherever she was resting now was soft and warm. She could feel Pantalaimon stirring; he was curled up near her armpit.

After working through the pain sitting up had caused, she opened her eyes. She was in the tent Will had bought what felt like ages ago, Serafina at her side. She was watching Lyra with a soft expression, a stone cup held out towards Lyra to take. Lyra accepted it. It was warm against her hands, and when she sipped it, it tasted sweet and floral.

“Drink all of it,” Serafina said quietly. She draped another blanket around Lyra’s shoulders. “You’ve got a breathing infection of some sort. I can hear it rattling about in your lungs.”

“My chest hurts,” Lyra agreed. Her voice sounded hoarse and her throat felt raw. She’d probably been coughing the entire time she was sleeping.

“I know,” Serafina soothed her. Her touch was motherly as she stroked Lyra’s hair. “I bet your throat hurts, too. This will help. Drink.”

Lyra nodded. She continued drinking the concoction as Serafina instructed. About halfway through, she felt the pain in her throat easing, and her chest felt less tight and heavy. She drank it with more enthusiasm after that.

“The mold…” she heard Pantalaimon murmur, still tucked warm and sleepy against her side. Lyra had just begun having the same thought when Pantalaimon voiced it. Had there truly been mold in the cabin, then, like Pantalaimon had insisted he could smell all along? Had it made her sick? Had it made the _baby_ sick? And on top of it: the cold, her exhaustion, the rowing…she was afraid to ask.

Pantalaimon came out of the sleeping bag and asked for her. “Serafina?”

She looked at Lyra’s dæmon, her eyes still soft with concern. Lyra’s heart was pounding with fear, and when Pantalaimon moved into her lap, she could feel that his was, too.

“The baby?” Pan’s voice was hardly above a whisper.

Lyra couldn’t look at Serafina. She looked at the bulge of her own stomach beneath the sleeping bag instead.

“Nothing I’ve seen indicates that anything is wrong with it,” Serafina reassured them. She reached out and set her slender hand on Lyra’s stomach. Her rings—so like the one she’d given Lyra—shined in the light from the lanterns. “Why do you ask? Do you feel okay?”

“Not earlier,” admitted Lyra, remembering how her abdomen and back had ached, how it’d been so hard to breathe. “I thought…but maybe that was the breathing illness.” She remembered something else with a shock. The same instant she had the thought, Pan jumped from her lap and went over to their rolling bag. He dug around and pulled out the Doppler machine and the tube of gel. Lyra flung the sleeping bag off her and moved her shirt up as Pantalaimon raced over to her.

“What’s that?” questioned Serafina curiously.

“It’s something Will brought from his world. It checks the baby’s heart,” explained Lyra. She was in a rush as she set the machine up beside her. She had never done this part, but she’d watched Will do it plenty. She pushed the same buttons she’d watched him push. Pan squirted the same amount of gel on her stomach that Will did. She grabbed the wand and pressed down as hard as Will did, moving it around, while Pantalaimon stared nervously at the blue screen. After a moment, there it was: galloping horses, the same as always. She peeked at the blue screen. The numbers were nearly the same as they always were, give or take a few beats per minute, but the screen showed her it was a good, strong rhythm. She was breathless with relief.

“I was so worried—I thought—I didn’t know if—” she dropped the wand down and shut the machine off, her hands shaking from more than just the cold. Serafina looked astonished as Lyra’s eyes welled with tears. “I thought something had happened and it was my fault.”

Serafina took her in her arms softly. “No,” she whispered against Lyra’s hair, “the female body is incredibly strong, Lyra. You wouldn’t believe the things it can endure.”

“And that potion for my breathing illness—”

“Perfectly safe. Helpful, even, if you’re concerned about something being wrong with the baby: it has incredible healing powers.”

Lyra relaxed. She breathed in Serafina’s scent for a few more moments, letting it calm her, taking comfort in the memory of that heartbeat.

“Where’s Malcolm?” she finally asked.

“Outside with our sisters. Between you and me, I think Polymnia is quite taken with him.”

Lyra laughed loudly at that. “Oh, lucky for him.”

“Poly’s quite beautiful,” Serafina agreed, equally amused. “Though she’s very soft-hearted. I hope he’s gentle with her.”

“He’s that way, too, so I wouldn’t worry,” Lyra decided. She sat up and took better stock of the tent. Her bag was to the side of it, there was a nest of blankets where Malcolm had been sleeping, and outside the tent, she could see the glow of a warm fire, with around six figures crowded around it. They were far enough away that she could only just make out the crackle of the fire and their laughter.

“Why are we so far from them?” she wondered.

“They’re our first line of defense. We need to be far enough that we’ll have time to fly off if they see or hear anybody. If anybody comes for us, they’ll be coming from that way; the only road is ahead of us.”

“Where are we? Lake Enara?” wondered Lyra. It didn’t feel like Lake Enara, though.

“No. We’re on an island just off the south of Svalbard, about an hour’s flight from Iorek. We’re waiting; the CCD has had zeppelins flying around, and while they don’t seem to have any particular guidance on where to look, we don’t want them finding us. We’re waiting until their zeppelins leave the area entirely to fly again. We don’t know how long that will be, but we’ll stay here as long as we have to.”

“I’m sorry,” Lyra said at once, humbled and shamed.

“No,” Serafina said, reaching out to nudge Lyra’s chin up so Lyra was looking at her. “Sisters don’t apologize. There’s no need. I have sent Kaisa to inform Iorek of our arrival. We are hoping he’ll meet us on the mainland.”

“He will,” said Lyra at once, certain. “He’ll be there.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” smiled Serafina. She took the empty mug from Lyra’s bedside. Lyra was already feeling better. She could breathe easier. “Now tell me: how did _this_ come to happen?” Her eyes dropped to Lyra’s stomach, leaving no doubts as to what she was asking. “You’ve been terribly brief in your letters, and Kaisa has always thought it impolite for him to ask on my behalf the few times he’s seen you.”

For the next hour or so, Lyra told Serafina everything, from the first time she’d heard Will’s bodiless voice to the tender moment they’d shared before he disappeared. Serafina listened with compassion, touching Lyra’s shoulder gently at the parts that hurt and laughing with her at the parts that were to be celebrated. Lyra told her all about the alleged prophecy and the things her alethiometer had said, about the door that was somewhere out there and where she thought it might be, about how worried she was.

Serafina absorbed it all quietly, thinking hard. Finally, she said: “My clan has no knowledge of a second prophecy. If the Church heard one, it did not come from us. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t come from one of the clans on the Church’s side.”

Lyra frowned. “But couldn’t they have made it up entirely?”

“They could have,” Serafina agreed. “But this angel…whoever they are…they clearly believed this prophecy, don’t you agree? To have gone to all this trouble to bring you and Will together. Whoever this angel was, they’ll have been on Xaphania’s side. They’ll be thinking this child is the key to destroying every remaining piece of the Church once and for all.”

“But not Xaphania herself,” argued Lyra. “She said Will and I had to live apart. She never told us there was another way, not really.”

“No, probably not Xaphania. Or perhaps that’s what she wants you to think. I don’t know, but I shall be listening to any whispers I hear of angels.”

Lyra wanted to go outside with the other witches and Malcolm, but she was still tired, and she knew she needed to take it easy while the potion worked through her system. So she lay back down in the sleeping bag and Pantalaimon curled up near her neck.

“If you’re really worried about the baby, the sisters and I can perform a spell we always do when one of us is pregnant,” Serafina offered. “All we need is spit. We can read the flames. They will tell us the sex of your child, its planetary alignments, and how it’s developing, among other things.”

Lyra considered that. It was possible that its heartbeat was fine but something else was terribly wrong. It wouldn’t hurt to know more, just in case. Just to be sure.

“I just want to know if it’s healthy. I don’t want to know all that other stuff. Not yet…not if Will’s not here.”

Serafina smiled. “I would have thought you would have already asked your alethiometer.”

“No. Not without Will,” she repeated. “Can you just find out if it’s all right—if it’s healthy? And only tell me that?”

Serafina set her hand over Lyra’s. “Of course.”

Lyra spat once in the cup the potion had been in. She and Pantalaimon curled up together inside the sleeping bag once she left with it, their hearts pounding nervously together.

“I hope everything is okay,” Pan said. He nuzzled over her stomach. “I so hope it is.”

Lyra couldn’t say those words aloud because she felt them so deeply she might cry. But Pantalaimon spoke for the both of them, anyway. Unable to wait patiently with her heart beating like a drum, Lyra leaned close to the nearest lantern and asked the same question of her alethiometer. _Is my baby healthy?_

_Yes,_ her alethiometer assured her without hesitation, and she and Pan relaxed.

They lay there quietly, listening to the far-off sounds of the witches chanting and the fire flaring, both of their hearts tender with so many different hopes and fears that they couldn’t think which to verbalize first.

“Pan?” asked Lyra, her voice soft.

“Hm?”

She stared up at the ceiling of the tent. There was condensation clinging to it from their body heat.

“You don’t think Will’s coming back, do you?”

Pantalaimon flinched against her as if she’d hit him.

“I don’t know, Lyra,” he admitted. “But he’s been gone a very long time. And he knew…he knew what would happen if he didn’t bring the fuel back. Which means he _can’t_ come back because he’d never leave us in danger like that if he had any choice. I don’t know.”

She turned and hid her face into the sleeping bag. “What do we do if they don’t ever come back? What do we do, Pan?”

“I don’t know. Serafina would stay with us. She could help you have the baby.”

“And then what? What do we tell the child? How can I…how can I look into its face every day and see Will there and know that I’ll never—” she broke off roughly.

“All we can do is work to find that door. That’s all we can do. But we can’t even do that until the baby is here—not physically travel to it, I mean. So we’ll just…we’ll take it one day at a time.”

The days had never felt so long to her.

* * *

 

Malcolm and Serafina woke her an uncertain amount of time later. It was dark; the fire had been extinguished. Lyra drifted in and out as Malcolm and Serafina entered the tent. The drag of the tent zipper sounded magnified in the silence of the night.

“I think so, too,” Malcolm whispered. It was in response to something Lyra had missed. He sounded exhausted. “And she doesn’t want to know that, right?”

“No,” affirmed Serafina. “Just whether the baby is healthy.”

“Well, at least there’s some good news to give her.”

Lyra felt Serafina lift her hand. “Lyra?”

She looked up at Serafina. Her features were lovely and haunting in the dark light.

“What?” she whispered.

Serafina smiled. “Your baby is doing just fine—” she stopped speaking suddenly, catching herself. Lyra looked at her oddly. “Sorry, I nearly said the baby’s name. We can see that, too. The baby is developing wonderfully, just as it should. No damage has been done to—it.”

Lyra relaxed fully. “Good. Thank you.”

“Of course,” said Serafina, and then, to Lyra’s delight, she leaned down and kissed her forehead softly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“‘Kay. Night…”

Lyra drifted off again while Malcolm settled down to sleep. She was jarred awake once more as some sort of animal gave an alarming cry in the distance. She jumped.

“Everything okay?” Malcolm hissed, concerned.

“Yeah,” she said. She yawned. “Just scared me is all. What do you think that was?”

“It was a rock ptarmigan,” he answered at once. Lyra didn’t even bother asking how he knew that, nor was she particularly sure what it was. He’d probably done one of his many dissertations on Arctic wildlife or something.

“‘Kay,” she said. She rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes. And then she rolled over onto her other side. After ten minutes, she realized she probably wouldn’t be falling asleep again for a while. “Malcolm?” she asked. “Are you asleep?”

“Yes. Currently dreaming of sausage and mash, a warm bed, and a glass of Tokay.”

She scowled at him in the dark, but he laughed, and she had to laugh with him.

“What is it?” he asked after their laughter died off.

“I heard a witch took a liking to you.”

When she looked over at him, his face was so red that she could see the splashes of color even in the dim moonlight. She laughed again, terribly amused by the situation—and happy for him.

“That’s special,” she said. “When a witch chooses you.”

“I—I don’t know what you’re…” his feigned affront gave way. “Her name is Poly. She’s very…spirited.”

“You can always turn witches down, you know. They don’t _always_ kill you.” She yawned. “Yeah, that was probably just that one time…” she muttered to herself.

She had been joking, but Malcolm didn’t respond. She glanced over at him, but he had rolled over onto his side, so she couldn’t see much.

“I’m joking,” she said. Nothing. “Malcolm. Dr. Polstead?”

“It’s just complicated,” he finally said, quietly, vulnerably.

Lyra understood _that_. “Complicated like there’s somebody else,” she realized. Those were the same words she’d given Billy a couple years ago now, at the end of it all.

“Sort of. She’s married, though. She lives in Ireland now. We haven’t spoken in nearly five years.”

“Ah,” said Lyra, her heart aching for him. “That’s tough.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Very…tough.”

Lyra turned over onto her side. She observed Malcolm as best as she could. “If you love someone, you ought to tell them. You’ll regret it forever if you don’t.”

He was quiet for a long while.

“It’s scary, though, I know, ‘cause what if they—they leave and then you never…well.” Her nose burned and her eyes seared. She pressed her shaking lips together and wrestled with the pain threatening to make her cry again.

“Yeah,” he finally agreed quietly, equally pained.

“Well,” Lyra said, her voice thick with emotion. She cleared her throat. “You’re older than me, and you took care of me when I was a baby and all, and you got more degrees, but…if you want my advice…for what it’s worth…you should tell whoever it is that you love them. You never know when it’ll be the last time.”

“Lyra, anybody would be lucky to have your advice,” admitted Malcolm softly. “And you’re right, of course.”

She let her eyes fall shut. Pantalaimon yawned against her neck. “Did you see that my baby’s okay?” she shared. “They did a spell out there. My alethiometer said the same thing, too.”

When he spoke, she could hear his smile. “I did. I saw it all. I was so glad. I was really worried before.”

“I was, too,” she confessed.

“I’m a bit curious about the name you’re going to choose, though.”

Lyra quickly covered her ears. “Don’t you dare tell me!”

“I won’t, I won’t!” he reassured her, his voice muffled. “I’m just excited to see how _that_ comes about.”

Lyra lowered her hands cautiously. “You say that like you’re going to stick around.”

He was surprised. “Of course I’m going to stick around. As long as you want me to, that is. I didn’t get you this far just to drop you off on Svalbard and say ‘good luck, hope to see you again before we both die’.”

She was touched by this. She didn’t know what to say. Her emotions were a tangle of relief and guilt.

“I sort of ruined your entire life, I think,” she realized. “The Church knows you helped me. You’ll always be in danger now. I’m so sorry, Malcolm. I’ve been messing with your life since before I could even talk. All I can say is that I’m really thankful for you.”

“And that’s enough,” he reassured her. “Nobody ever made me help you. I did it because someone ought to. Because I care about you. Because it was the right thing to do.”

She stretched her arm out blindly and patted his forearm. “You’re a good man. You’ll be breaking Poly’s heart if you turn her down, I think. And whoever it is that you love, I bet they love you back.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said, chuckling. “Thank you, though, Lyra. That’s very kind.”

“It’s just the truth,” she shrugged.

She drifted towards sleep again. His voice broke the silence before she’d completely nodded off.

“Lyra? I know you’re worried. About Will. About everything. But he’s going to come back.”

She wanted so terribly to believe him. She didn’t respond. She lay there with her eyes shut, clinging to every bit of hope she could muster.

“I just know that he is,” Malcolm yawned.

Lyra stared up into the darkness, her heart pounding, and it was another hour at least before she finally fell asleep.

* * *

 

“Will, you’re going to pace a hole in the floor.”

“Then I pace a hole in the fucking floor,” he snapped, without thinking. He groaned and rubbed his face in frustration. He turned and looked at Mary, who looked seconds from smacking him. “I’m sorry, Mary. I just—I can’t care about anything but Lyra right now, not the bloody floor, or my own bloody _anything_ , or—or—!” Tormented, he stopped walking and fell down onto the sofa along the back wall of Mary’s office. He hid his face in his hands because he was certain he was going to cry. “I don’t know what to do. I need you to help me.”

“If I knew how, I would,” she said. “You’ve tried getting drunk, you’ve tried everything. If you can’t go back, then you can’t go back. Maybe whatever ability you had before—”

“Don’t—”

“—was destroyed when you hit your head in the other world, or maybe whoever gave it to you decided you didn’t need it anymore—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” he cried. He doubled over and pressed his face into his knees. He looped his arms over the back of his head and rocked, so miserable and terrified that he wanted to scream. He felt as if his chest might explode.

“I’m so sorry, Will. I wish I could fix this,” she said softly.

His first sob was broken and breathless. He flinched away when she reached out to him. He covered his head again and cried in violent, gasping bursts. Somewhere out there—so far away that Will could never hope to get there—Lyra was stuck in the middle of the ocean, and she was probably already dead. It had been nearly a _week._ It had been the worst week of his entire life. And he’d had some horrible ones. She had needed him and he had let her down.

“It’s all my fault,” he said, and it only made him feel worse when Mary tried to tell him that it wasn’t.

“All is not lost—”

“Yes it is! Yes it _is_!” he thundered, enraged. He looked up at her, his eyes fierce and his vision blurry behind tears. She leaned back from him, alarmed. “She’s probably dead, Mary! How can you say—how can you say—” he was gasping now. This hurt worse than the first time he’d told her goodbye.

She waited until he’d calmed down. It took quite a while before he did.

“We don’t know that she’s dead. But I do know how we can find out.”

He didn’t want to hear about her ‘Dark Matter Program’ or her ‘talking Dust’ or any of it. He looked away, disgusted at the entire situation, and especially at himself.

“I can find out. And I can find out where the door is in our world. We’ll go to her, Will. If she’s alive, you know where she’ll be, don’t you?”

He laughed humorlessly. He wiped at his eyes afterwards. “If she’s alive? Svalbard— _if_ the CCD hasn’t caught her, _if_ she was able to make it there.” He hated the uncertainties.

“So if we find that door…we can find her,” continued Mary.  

He was crying earnestly now. “And by then she’ll have had the baby. By herself, Mary. _Alone_. Maybe the child will have already grown up...they won’t even know they have a dad…Mary, I can’t let that happen. This is my _family_.”

This time, when she reached for him, he was too upset to push her away. She patted his back awkwardly, never one to display grand maternal gestures.

“We’ll work as hard as we can, as fast as we can. That’s all we can do, Will. That’s it. So you can either yell at me, and cry, and scream—or you can take a deep breath, sit up, and get to work right now.”

He had no choice in the matter. Giving up on Lyra—on his family—was not an option.

* * *

 

In the two weeks that followed on that small, arctic island, Lyra was treated like a princess.

Her sisters constantly checked in on her with warm, gentle touches and probing looks of concern. She was given more to eat than everybody else, she always had somebody looking after her wherever she went, and there was always a witch tending the fire nearby the tent to keep Lyra warm. For all Serafina’s talk about how tough the female body was, the witches treated Lyra like she was incredibly breakable.

“Not breakable,” Serafina explained to Lyra once she’d confronted her about it. “Special. Beloved.”

They were washing up a little ways from the main camp, using water heated over the fire and staying nearby its flames so Lyra didn’t freeze. It was mid-October now, and colder and getting colder still, but Lyra wasn’t worried about it: it was difficult to worry about anything with six different witches—and a doting Scholar— minding your every move.

Lyra mulled over Serfina’s answer as she scrubbed quickly at her skin, trying to wash as thoroughly and as quickly as possible. “And am _I_ special and beloved? Or is the baby?”

Serafina looked mildly surprised by that question. She paused before she dunked her hair back in the bucket of water to rinse the soap from her hair. “Both of you, of course. Understand, Lyra, that this process is sacred to us. Our power, everything we are, we owe it to _this_.” She reached out and set a bare hand on Lyra’s stomach. “All our women are beloved. All our women are cherished. And if they choose to have children—and not all do, Lyra; some are destined for other things—their children are cherished, and we protect those children fiercely as soon as their mothers form an attachment to them.”

Lyra stood shivering after she dumped water over herself, washing the lavender soap from her skin and hair. She took a warm towel from Serafina and quickly dried. She yanked her many layers of clothes back on afterwards.

She processed what Serafina said. “And I’ve already formed an attachment to this baby. So you’re protecting it while it’s still _here,_ ” she surmised, patting her stomach. 

“Correct. You’ve accepted it as yours. That happens earlier for some women and later for others, but as soon as it does, the baby is one of us, too, and we’ll protect it with everything we have.”

Lyra was reassured by this. “So it’s not because they think something is going to happen to it, or to me?”

Serafina smiled. “No. Of course not. I told you: everything is going perfectly.”

Lyra didn’t argue with her, but she didn’t think things were perfect. They’d gotten word from another witch’s dæmon that the CCD had found the empty sailboat. They were actively looking for her now, though thankfully the witches had been able to set a false trail deep into Sveden that the CCD appeared to be following as of late. Lyra could only hope they kept on it.

(And Will still wasn’t back. But Lyra couldn’t dwell on that too long, or she felt as if she were being suffocated.)

Pantalaimon, meanwhile, was stretching his independence from Lyra by accompanying the witches’ dæmons on their various missions every now and then (the landlocked ones, anyway). He and Lyra were fine with him going on day trips, but the one time he tried to go somewhere overnight, Lyra had nearly been sick with worry and missing him. He had fled back to her arms and sworn he wouldn’t leave her that long ever again.

Once they’d heard from a reliable source that the CCD was intent on the Sveden trail—and Kaisa had returned to inform them that Iorek was at the coast of the mainland waiting for them—they began packing up their camp and preparing for their journey. Lyra was beyond ready to see Iorek and was ready far before anybody else was. She sat inside the tent and waited while Malcolm and Asta packed their things, asking her alethiometer the same question she’d been asking on repeat: _how soon is soon? How soon is soon? How soon is soon?_

_When will he come back?_

_How soon is soon?_

She was pouring over the answer again and debating whether or not she had time to dig her alethiometry books out of her bag when she felt something odd. It was faint enough that it didn’t necessarily startle her, but it pulled her from her trance. She fell still, her hands closed around her alethiometer, and felt the same thing again: a fluttering sensation, perhaps, like butterfly wings beating gently inside her stomach. She stopped moving—she even stopped breathing for a moment. Then, again, but different: soft, tapping, the movement light but unmistakable. She sat dumbfounded for a very long while, one hand still holding her alethiometer, the other on her stomach.

Asta noticed. She walked over to her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” said Lyra. Her voice sounded very far away. Suddenly, her throat was narrow, and she could hardly speak. “Fine.”

When Pantalaimon returned from his brief scouting mission with the other dæmons—to make sure the area spanning between them and the shoreline was safe—Lyra was in the middle of helping Malcolm take down the tent, and so she couldn’t talk about it. But he felt her turbulent emotions. He scaled up her arm to drape himself around her neck as they began their hike.

“What is it?” he whispered to her.

She was aware of the tears in her eyes, but she knew the witches would think it was from the cold they themselves couldn’t feel. And as they walked across the snowy, barren landscape, she felt she was drowning. She had anticipated that the first time she felt the baby move would be wondrous, and delightful, and _happy_. But she just felt very sad. Will wasn’t here to share this with her. He might never be back. He might never know that their baby moved, that she’d felt it. He might never know their baby. And she might never see him ever again.

How could she possibly say those things to Pantalaimon without weeping right then and there? And she couldn’t do that; she had to be strong and brave. She had to hold herself together even if she felt broken up inside.

So she shook her head slightly, enough that Pan saw it and understood, and then she looked off to the side, her jaw working as she struggled against the savage sadness within herself.

It consumed her for their entire miserable hike. As they flew over the water separating them from the main island of Svalbard, she felt those same movements again and had to hide her face into Pantalaimon’s warm fur. This time—now that he was close to her again—he realized what was happening. He felt what she felt. He nuzzled her cheek and didn’t say anything, either.

And finally—finally— _finally_. Iorek. She spotted him while still in the air, his massive, white fur nearly blending in with the arctic landscape, his dented, damaged armor glinting just slightly in the weak sun. He had come alone. It didn’t matter. He looked every bit as imposing and powerful now as he’d looked when she was a little girl.

She was off Serafina’s broom before they’d even truly touched down. She nearly fell from the high jump but managed to right herself. She took off running across the snowy bank, her heart hammering hard in her chest, the icy wind numbing her face.

“Iorek!” she cried, relieved. “Iorek Byrnison!”

“Lyra Silvertongue,” he said, his voice a deep, familiar rumble, and then she threw herself into his arms.

He lifted her up as easily as he’d done when she was eleven. She pressed her face into the fur at his neck and half-laughed and half-cried. She was so pleased to see him, her old friend, _Iorek_ , but she felt terribly aged from the last time she had.

“Lyra,” said the bear, pulling her back with a gentle tug of his paws so he could look down at her face. Lyra stared hard into his eyes, memorizing his face, memorizing this moment. “Where’s the boy?” Iorek asked. He looked at their tiny group. “You said Will was coming. Where is he?”

At once, the massive surge of pain she’d been beating back for days and days swelled and overtook her. She felt her grip on his fur weaken. Had he not been holding her, she might have fallen to the snow. It knocked the breath from her, and she felt Iorek bristle in alarm, and then she was weeping. And once she started, she couldn’t stop. She heard nothing for the longest time but her sobs, and the witches’ somber voices, and Iorek’s angry one as he demanded to know what they had done to her. When Serafina explained ( _“Will’s gone. We don’t know if he’ll ever be back,”)_ she broke down all over again, crying so hard she was dizzy from it, crying so hard her tears froze in Iorek’s fur, so hard she was gasping, so hard she thought she might be sick from it. It was all leaving her at once. She was helpless to stop it.

“Come now,” Iorek said softly to her. He swung her over so she could sit on his back. “Things are never as bad as they seem far from home. So let’s get you there.”

Home? But where was home? Not Jordan College, not anymore—the Church had taken that. Not Will’s arms, not anymore—the Church had taken that, too, for if they’d never crashed into the sailboat, and Will had never been hurt, he’d still be here with her. Where was home?

She held tight to Iorek’s fur as he started off, Pantalaimon riding inside her coat to keep both of them warm, but there was no need to hold so tightly: Iorek didn’t run. He kept at a leisurely pace, and Lyra—swallowed up by pain, certain in that moment that she’d never come out the other side of it—blinked her tears down her face and stared numbly into the white abyss that surrounded them. She hardly heard a word anybody said. She hardly felt the cold. When they entered the main settlement, bears sank low in a bow, and the younger cubs rushed forward excitedly to see Lyra, but their mothers quickly snatched them up by the napes of their necks when they spotted Lyra’s expression.

And then she saw her cottage in the distance, the windows lit up, warmth spilling from every crack. To see someplace so familiar—someplace she had spent many safe nights—filled her with a longing so deep that she almost jumped from Iorek’s back and ran towards it. But she forced herself to remain patient.

Iorek walked her around to the back patio where there was a place he could shake the snow from his fur, and he sat, waiting as Lyra slid down from his back. She walked up and set her palm against the warm glass of the back window. Pantalaimon jumped to the ground and hurried over to the window ledge he’d spent many mornings perched, watching the comings and goings of the panserbjørne. She turned around and found Iorek’s eyes.

“Won’t you come in?” she begged. She didn’t want to say goodbye to him already, but she was far too cold to remain outdoors a moment longer.

“For some time,” he agreed, his voice vibrating deep in his chest.

Lyra took her boots off and left them in the designated box just inside the back door. Pantalaimon and Iorek shook more snow and ice from their fur before stepping inside. Once they did, Lyra and Pantalaimon delighted in the warmth of their cottage, hurrying over to thaw their fingers and toes out by the fire. Lyra hung her outer layers up on the hooks by the fireplace while Iorek curled up on the weatherproof rug set just for him near the back doors.

“Come, child,” beckoned Iorek.

“I’m not a child anymore,” corrected Lyra, and she had never been more aware of that fact that she was right then, standing so far from Jordan, pregnant, alone. _Did my mother feel this way?_ She had to wonder. _Was she alone, too? Is that why she hated me?_

“You are always the same to me.”

She couldn’t argue with that. She walked over and sank down beside Iorek. She leaned against his cool fur. He nuzzled at her tearstained cheeks.

“What is all this sadness about?” he asked her. His voice rumbled up through the floorboards.

As always, the smallest questions from Iorek opened the widest floodgates in Lyra.

“I’m frightened, Iorek,” she said, her voice trembling. Pantalaimon sat in her lap and rested his chin against her stomach. She stroked his back, comforting him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see Will again. Ever. And I’m going to have his baby, and he might never see it, might never see _me_ , and I don’t want to do this without him—any of this. I don’t want to miss him anymore. I missed him for so long, and then I got him back, and now—now—Iorek, this is almost worse than if he’d never come back to me at all. I thought—I thought that…I thought we’d be happy. That we’d be a family. My alethiometer told me that, but…how could it be wrong? I don’t feel as if I can trust anything anymore. And I’m _scared_.”

She closed her arms over Pan and her baby and swallowed the tears that wanted to come. She couldn’t believe she still had any left in her.

Iorek thought for a while before he answered. “Bears don’t feel this way about families; it’s not in our nature. Mothers raise the cubs, and fathers rarely see them, and that is just the way of things. But I should feel sad, too, if I was unable to ever see my cubs again by some force outside myself, if it was a choice taken from me.”

That only made Lyra want to cry more.

“But I know that boy. He faced me down when he was only a child, and he won. If he found his way to you once, when they all said he never could, he’ll find his way back to you again. You must have faith.”

“I _can’t_ ,” she interrupted, her voice high and thin with oncoming tears. She was afraid to hope, because if she was wrong, it would devastate her beyond repair.

“You _must_. You’ll tarnish your strength this way. You must push this fear away, overcome it, and move past it. Or else you’ll drown in it.”

She had no idea how he knew her emotions so well, but that was exactly what she’d been feeling: drowned.

“You must be strong now,” he told her firmly, sternly. “Too much relies on it.”

But she had always had to be strong. Always. She couldn’t remember a moment since she’d turned eleven that she hadn’t had to be, except for the moments she’d spent in Will’s arms. And right then, she was tired. She didn’t want to be strong. She just wanted to be normal. She wanted to be able to have a family like anybody else, to live in peace, to live a _life_. She was tired of being hunted. She was too tired to fight.

“I’m tired, Iorek,” she admitted.

“No, you aren’t,” he corrected at once, but his voice was gentle, affectionate. She hadn’t noticed that she’d started to cry again until he rubbed the tears away by nuzzling her cheek. “Your exhaustion is what they want. Do not give it to them. Do not make their battle easier. They deserve nothing from you.”

Pantalaimon voiced what she couldn’t. “We feel like we’ve gotten ourselves into so much trouble that there’s no coming out of it, not this time. We feel like we’ll never see him again, that we’ve ruined everything, and that’s unbearable.”

“It is never over until it is over. Is it over, Lyra Silvertongue? You tell me. Is it over?”

He leaned forward and peered into her eyes. His were deep black and more emotive than she’d ever seen them. She looked into his eyes, and she understood. She set her hands on her abdomen. She smoothed her hands up and over the curve of her stomach, her throat narrow and her heart rising with bittersweet hope.

“No,” she admitted. “It’s not over.” _It hasn’t even fully begun._

“And so, if it’s not over,” he continued, “the fight has only just begun. And it will keep going—until it _is_ done. And that won’t be until you are dead, many decades from now, after I am, too. There is no space for exhaustion.”

With that, he laid his face on his paws and gave a rumbling, affectionate growl as she leaned back against him. She felt it in her bones.

“You’re right, Iorek, dear Iorek,” she whispered softly. She felt renewed focus and hope. “I have to stay strong. I have to have my child, and protect it, and find Will, and then we have to take down the Church and get revenge for all the things they’ve done to me, to us, so that my child never has to run like I have.”

He rumbled in approval, louder this time, prouder. “And I shall be at your side as you take your revenge.”

She turned and hid her face in his fur, certain that only Iorek could have talked sense into her, thankful to have found him and to have made it to this warm cottage—this home.

* * *

 

Malcolm arrived much later that night, having gone the long way rather than riding on an armored bear’s back like Lyra had done.

Lyra welcomed him in the cottage, showed him where to hang his outerwear, and then showed him his room.

He was so thankful for the warmth that he, like Lyra, collapsed on the plush carpet in front of the crackling fire, groaning happily. He looked around the bright cottage, beaming, drenched in warm yellow light from the fireplace.

“This is the best place I’ve ever been,” he decided. Asta purred so loudly Lyra heard it clearly over the popping of the logs.

Lyra looked over at Malcolm after stifling a yawn. “I’ve got chocolatl here from the last time I visited. It’s probably still good. Want some?”

“More than I’ve ever wanted anything before,” he said. He stretched his legs out and let his head fall back against the sofa cushions, yawning deeply.

Lyra put the kettle on, but by the time she’d stretched back out in front of the fire, she had no interest in getting up to mix the chocolatl. She kicked Malcolm’s leg lightly.

“I put the kettle on. You can go mix the chocolatl.”

“Eugh…Asta?”

“No.”

He looked over at Pantalaimon. “Pan?”

Pan pretended he was asleep.

“Okay, then,” Malcolm decided, forced cheerfulness in his tone. “It’s on me. Chocolatl time.”

Lyra was dozing by the time he returned. She forced herself to sit up and lean against the sofa. She sipped cautiously at the hot drink. The sweet richness stole across her tongue and made her sigh happily.

“You’re better at making chocolatl anyway,” she decided.

“You can thank Dr. Relf.”

“And to think she only taught me academics,” scoffed Lyra. “She’s been holding out on me.”

Malcolm laughed. They both rested with their eyes shut, sipping bit by bit at their chocolatl, their dæmons snoozing at their sides.

“Are you feeling better?” asked Malcolm after a while, his voice soft and a bit embarrassed. Lyra knew he was thinking about her sobbing fit in Iorek’s arms earlier. Her cheeks burned.

“Yeah,” she said, and it was true. “Got to be. So I am.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It sort of is right now,” she said, thinking of the things Iorek had said. “It won’t always be, though.”

“Well,” he said quietly. “I know it’s not much consolation, but _I_ won’t be going anywhere unless you ask it of me.”

It _was_ comforting to hear that. But Lyra didn’t want to talk about her reasons for crying earlier. She felt so much better after talking with Iorek, and she was afraid she’d end up upsetting herself again. So she turned to Malcolm and said: “It does make me feel better. It makes me feel a lot better to know you’ll be here to deliver my baby.”

As she’d predicted, Malcolm actually jumped at that, his face paling so rapidly that his freckles appeared to get darker in contrast. He choked on the sip of chocolatl he’d just taken and began coughing hard.

“Wha-What?!” he sputtered, his eyes watering. “Sorry—um. I think—when I said that I’d be there for you—I meant, you know, as your friend, your teacher, your…protector even, but not…see, I’ve never in my life studied midwifery, and I…well, I wouldn’t even know what to _do_...there’s, uh, a lot to all that, and…and…and…if Will doesn’t come back, I bet the witches could do it, witches seem very…er…acquainted with…with…”

Lyra was laughing now, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach as she did. Malcolm’s words gradually died off.

“You’re joking,” he realized, his voice flat.

“So much,” Lyra gasped, struggling to get her words out around her laughter. “So much. I’m not letting you deliver my baby, Dr. Polstead.” She started laughing even harder after that, but soon stopped because she nearly peed on herself again.

“You’re funny,” he told her, mopping at the front of his shirt where he’d spat chocolatl. “Very funny. You get your dark sense of humor from your father.”

She was still chuckling softly. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“You aren’t!”

She started laughing again. He joined in. She wondered if she’d ever made him laugh when she was a baby. She bet he made her laugh all the time. It seemed easy for them, laughing together. And she would need all the laughter she could get in the months to come.

They finished their chocolatl, talking some but mostly just resting in a comfortable silence, and then they retired to bed. Lyra lit the fireplace in her bedroom and crawled into her bed. Her sheets were a bit dusty—it had been a long time since she’d been here, and Iorek certainly didn’t know anything about housekeeping, not that she expected him to—but the bed was the most comfortable place she’d rested since she left home despite that.

Pantalaimon tucked himself against her throat. Lyra curled up on her side, and when she felt the baby move again, she set her hand over her stomach.

“I wanted so terribly to share this with Will,” Lyra whispered, finally voicing the desire that had pained her the most that day.

“He would’ve loved it,” Pantalaimon agreed. He and Lyra sighed together, both thinking of the way Will’s face had lit up the first time they’d heard the baby’s heartbeat. “But I can’t feel anything from out here yet,” Pan pointed out, sliding down to nudge the outside of her stomach. “Maybe by the time he comes back, _he’ll_ be able to feel it, and that’ll be even more special, won’t it?”

She clung to Pan’s optimism, recognizing that if it was in him, it was somewhere in her, too. “Yeah. It will be. And my alethiometer did say _soon_. It said we would be together. I should trust it. It’s never been wrong before.”

“It _never_ has,” he agreed fiercely. “I don’t think it could lie even if it wanted to.”

“Probably not.”

“And it could be worse,” Pantalaimon reminded her. “We could be captured by the Church. But we’re not. We’re here, safe with Iorek, and Serafina and Kaisa. With Malcolm and Asta. They’re good friends to us, Lyra.”

“They are,” she agreed, her heart warm with affection and respect. “We’re lucky for that.”

“I just hope, wherever Will and Kirjava are, that they’re okay,” Pantalaimon said quietly.

“Oh, me too, Pan. Me too,” she whispered.

He curled up in her arms. She thought suddenly about what had happened on the shores of the land of the dead, when he’d been ripped from her heart, when she had felt closer to death than ever before. At least _he_ was here—Pan. At least, no matter what happened—even if she died—she wouldn’t ever have to be without _him_ again.

“We’re going to be okay.”

She said it without thinking of it first. It just came from her, like the alethiometer’s meanings came to her, easy and right.

“We always are,” agreed Pantalaimon.

She stroked his fur and drifted off to sleep, lulled by the familiar beating of his heart and the soft, periodic movements of her and Will’s child.

* * *

 

Will returned with coffee for the third time that night. Mary hardly acknowledged him, reached past him for hers, and began drinking it at once, her eyes lined with exhaustion. The entire time, she kept her right hand on the computer keyboard, never daring to stray far in case something happened on the screen that should need her input.

“How’s it going?” Will asked. He walked over and sat on the floor in front of the sofa, where Kirjava was waiting. She moved into his lap. He felt her feelings of frustration. Not so well, then.

“Oh, how’s rebuilding something I have nothing more sustainable than memories of? How’s rebuilding a program from scratch that I created half with sheer luck and instinct last time? Fine. Sure. Good.”

She looked away from him and took another deep drink of coffee. Will pursed his lips.

“Okay, so it’s not going well,” he summarized.

She groaned. “I’ve got all the parts where they need to be—the detector, the Cave—but something’s still off with the programming. See, watch, hold this—” she held her hand out. Will was confused.

“Hold your hand?”

“Give it here!” she said, impatient.

He passed her his right hand. She moved it and set it down on the space bar of the keyboard. “Keep there.”

“Okay,” he said warily, reminded forcefully, once again, why this type of science had never been his calling.

He fought back another yawn as Mary hooked the electrodes attached to the detector to her own head. She sat in her computer chair.

“Lift your hand now,” she ordered, and Will quickly complied.

As soon as he lifted his hand off the keyboard, the screen went a dark, somber green—nearly black—and then flashed a couple times with a variety of different, swirling colors. Will had never seen it do that before. He leaned in.

“That looks different,” he said, excitement flooding his exhausted voice.

“Different, yes. But not good enough. See, before, I had it programmed where Dust could respond with words. But I can’t get back to that point. It’s just…see, I can do it this way, like Lyra showed me, but it doesn’t do us any bloody good, does it? Unless you happen to speak ‘The Shadow Language.’” She closed the term in sarcastic finger-quotes.

Will shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

She looked hopeful. “I don’t suppose you know enough about her alethiometer symbols to picture all of them in your head?”

He shook his head again. “No. I can…I can see the alethiometer in her hands in my mind, but I can’t picture all the symbols, and anyway, I have no idea what any of them mean. Not really.”

“Ah,” she said, and then she sighed. “Lyra was able to get the machine to communicate with her that way once, using that language they both knew. Ah well. I’ll just have to keep working at it.”

Will drank his coffee to keep from letting his impatience turn into callous rudeness. It scalded his tongue, but he kept drinking it anyway. He half-expected Mary to call it quits—both dreading and desiring the moment they both gave up for the night—but she surprised him by patting the chair beside the computer.

“Come on,” she said. She chugged another fourth of her coffee. At this rate, he’d have to make another coffee run before the night was over. “Make yourself useful, then.”

He walked over and sat in the seat. Mary often hooked him up to the Cave so she could fiddle with the algorithm while watching the activity on the screen. Will was used to this—they’d been doing this same thing every day for over a month now—so he set his chin in his hand and let his mind wander once she’d placed the electrodes in place. He needed to pick up some groceries in the morning…did Lyra have food, wherever she was? (Stop.)

He needed to pay the bills—his and his mum’s—and—did Lyra have someplace warm to stay tonight? Or was she stuck in the ocean? Stuck in the woods? On the run, cold? ( _Stop.)_ Maybe she was dead. Maybe he would never be able to see her again even if he did find the door. Was she dead—gone? Was Pantalaimon nothing more than drifting atoms now? Were they gone? ( _Stop!!_ ).

He’d hardly noticed that Mary was typing until the noise ceased. And even then, he was too deep in his own anguished thoughts to note it more than passively.

“Oh!” Mary said suddenly, alarmed, and then she dropped her coffee onto the desk. Will’s heart stopped. Mary smacked the coffee cup off the desk—sending hot coffee flying through the air as it spiraled to the floor—and then she yanked her cardigan off and threw it down in the puddle on the desk. “No, no, no!!” she cried, her face drained of color.

“Did it get on the Cave?” Will asked, serious and stricken, but not very surprised. That was the sort of luck he was having as of late.

“No—no—only just, though, another moment and it would have—Will, what were you thinking before?”

Will looked at her. His heart skipped a beat. “What? I don’t know. Why?”

“Because I saw…for a moment…Will, the screen flashed the word ‘No’.”

He couldn’t let himself hope, but foolishly, his heart was rising anyway. “You’re positive?”

“Positive. Just for a moment…and I hadn’t typed anything in, which means I coded the algorithm differently this time than last time…but if you were thinking a question…?”

“Loads of them,” he realized. His palms were sweaty: he rubbed them against his trousers. “I was speculating, you know, thinking and asking questions in my head, I wasn’t even asking _the Cave_ anything…so you think it can do it that way this time? Answer questions we think by using words?”

Mary looked years younger. Her eyes were bright and her face seemed to be glowing. Her smile was gradual and mischievous. “Only one way to find out.”

Will nodded. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. And for the first time in a while, he _let_ himself wonder.

_Is Lyra safe_? he asked, over and over again, and for good measure, he translated the question into any language he’d ever studied during his school years. Spanish, French—he even tried to translate it into Mandarin using the tiny bit Mary had taught him, but he got frustrated and gave up halfway through. Then, again: _Is Lyra safe? Is Lyra Silvertongue safe? Is Lyra Silvertongue safe?_

A sharp intake of breath from Mary told him they were getting a response. Her voice was trembling when she read it aloud. Will didn’t dare to open his eyes lest he ruined his concentration.

“‘For now’,” Mary read off, and Will heard himself cry out in audible relief. “‘She is—’ what?”

Mary sounded confused. Will opened his eyes despite himself. The screen read:

_FOR NOW. SHE IS A_

The rest of the answer ran off the screen, the font too large to provide any more space. Mary groaned.

“Oh, no! _Come on_! The coding—I must’ve somehow made it where the font can only display this size—meaning our answers can only be brief—I don’t understand _how_ …oh, but if I mess with it I might be able to—”

“No,” Will said at once, alarmed. “Mary, don’t mess with it anymore. It’s working. It took us ages to even get this far. What if we try to tweak it and end up erasing all we’ve done thus far? We’ll just have to take short answers.”

Mary looked bothered by this, but she didn’t fight Will on it.

“Ask where the door is,” Mary urged at once.

Will shook his head. “I need to know other things first.”

_Where is Lyra_?

“‘Svalbard,’” Mary read.

_With King Iorek?_

“‘Yes.’”

Will had to take a moment. He bowed over, his face pressing into his open hands, his breath leaving him in a weak, shaky exhalation. Reassurance like he’d never felt flooded through his body. He was absolutely speechless with it. Kirjava rubbed against his legs, purring so loudly Mary could hear it—she gave a brief laugh.

_How did she get there? How is she doing? Who is there with her?_

“Witch—She’s desol—Mal—Will, stop, you’re confusing it! It’s trying to answer a million different things at once, it keeps changing answers!”

“Sorry,” he said. He was trembling. Kirjava leapt up onto his lap and leaned against him, sending a thought his way to _calm down_. He listened.

“Focus. I know you want to know more, but we need to know the basics first. We know she’s alive. We know where she is. What else do we have to know?” Mary asked.

Will automatically began to think of the question, but before he did, he stopped himself.

“Get a piece of paper,” Will said. Mary knocked more things onto the floor as she scrambled for a spare bit of paper and a pen from her messy desk. As soon as she had it in hand, ready to record the answer, Will thought about the question that’d been tormenting him for over a month now.

_Where is the door between my world and hers?_

He heard the pencil scratching fast against the notepad.

“‘The Torra Cons’…that was all that fit,” Mary voiced, baffled. “Ask it where—oh,” Will had already done that, “‘Namibia.’ Ha! Lyra was right; it is somewhere in Africa…what are you asking now?”

_Where is the door between worlds at this Torra place? How will we know where to look for it?_

“…‘Follow the ele…’.” Mary sighed. “I _wondered_ how long it’d be until we were given vague, annoying instructions. Follow the elephants? Well, first we’ve got to get there, and then we’ve got to _find_ some elephants, and then we’ve got to…--”

_Will I be able to get through this door?_

“…‘If you can conv…’ that’s all. Convene? Convince? Converse? Converge? Con…Convalesce! That would make sense. Maybe it means you’ve got to get well again after your head injury first.”

_Why can’t I travel to see Lyra anymore?_

“‘It was a gift’,” Mary read. She paused. “What was a gift? What’d you ask?”

  _Was it taken from me? Or did I lose the ability when I hurt myself?_

“‘It was not taken.’”

_So I lost it?_

“‘You lost it, b…’”

_But what?_

“‘Not from injur…’ Injury.”

_From what, then? Can I get it back?_

“‘From yourself.’”

_What? I don’t understand. What do you mean? I took the ability from myself?_

“‘Yes.’”

_What do I do to get it back?_

“‘Find the door.’”

_But that could take weeks. Months, even. How can I visit her again?_

“‘Find the door.’”

_I need to see her again before that. How can I see her again before that? How can I travel like I was before?_

“‘Do not waste ti…’ time?”

_What do you mean? How is it wasting time? Wasting time until what?_

“‘Do not waste ti…’ I think you’re aggravating it, Will,” Mary said uneasily.

But he didn’t care. He felt he deserved more answers than that. He felt frustrated and stressed and confused. _But it won’t be wasting time if I just visit her for a few minutes or so, even just_ once _. I could do it while I’m on the airplane to get to the door. It wouldn’t hold me back from finding her. How can I see her again? What do I do?_

“‘Find her and t…’ And time? And…what?”

_Find Lyra and who else?_

“‘And the child.’”                   

His heart lurched.

_My child? Mine and Lyra’s?_

“‘Yes.’”

His mind was a frantic tangle of a million different panicked thoughts. It took him at least a minute to get himself calm enough to form a coherent question. _I won’t find Lyra before the baby is born?_

“‘Do not waste ti…’”

“ _Ugh_!” Will exploded, frustrated. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to talk about! Time! Will I make it there before or not?!” _Will I make it there before the baby is born?_

“‘Do not—’ I’m not even going to read that to you again, Will. It’s just repeating itself.”

He tried to ask the same question three different ways, but the machine just repeated itself. He tried to ask a completely unrelated question— _is the baby developing properly?—_ but still, the Cave kept repeating the same thing. _Do not waste time, do not waste time._ He never had. And he wasn’t about to start now.

Finally, after a certain point, it had either stopped working altogether or it had chosen to give Will the silent treatment.

“Well _I_ for one get the overwhelming feeling that you shouldn’t waste time, Will,” said Mary.

Will glowered at her, not amused in the slightest. She laughed at her own joke; her success at getting the Cave sort-of functional again, at finding out where the door was, at learning that Lyra was okay and safe had completely turned her mood around (the excessive amounts of caffeine probably didn’t hurt, either.) She was whistling the Star Wars theme as she moved to her laptop and pulled up Google Earth.

Kirjava bumped her face against Will’s chest.

“Don’t fret,” she told him quietly, where only Will could hear. “It didn’t say for a _fact_ that you’d miss the birth. It just said what we needed to do. And I think it’s right, Will.”

He couldn’t even look at her after she said that. He was wounded and disgusted.

“I do,” Kirjava persisted, unabashed. “And I know, deep down, that you do, too. We were getting too complacent. We _were_ wasting time: every hour we spent in Lyra’s world with her was indulgent, and it didn’t help us get any closer to finding her.”

“Because God forbid I _ever_ enjoy myself, or spend time with somebody just because I love them and I want to be with them. God forbid I ever spend any time not feeling alone and stressed.”

“I’m not saying we didn’t deserve it. I’m just saying that it was a waste of time if the ultimate goal was to find her. And that always had to be the goal…look how unreliable what we were doing was. Would that have ever felt like enough? Knowing that it could be taken away at any moment?”

It wouldn’t. He didn’t have to say it. She knew how he felt.

Will heard the sound of the printer roaring to life. Mary clicked a few more things and then swung around in her chair to smile at him.

“Okay, here’s what I’ve found…”


	6. no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! This one took a lot of work. Thank you to those who left kudos and/or commented! And thanks for reading :)

Lyra was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear Malcolm enter the cottage until he was right there behind her chair. When she sensed his sudden presence, she jumped in alarm. Her alethiometer slipped from her fingers and landed on the tabletop. When she reared around to see Malcolm—standing shocked, a giant brown bag bulging with groceries in his hands—she set a hand over her heart and gasped in relief.

“Sorry,” Malcolm said quickly, his eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you okay?”

She shut her eyes as she tried to slow the panic that’d surged up so suddenly. She set a hand on her stomach as she felt the baby kicking and squirming around in time with her pounding heart.

“Yeah,” she finally said. She heard him set the bag on the table. “I just wasn’t expecting you back yet, and I was asking my alethiometer about the Church and their plans, and…yeah. I’m fine.”

When she opened her eyes again—once she felt calmer—he was pulling item after item from the bag and storing it away properly.

“I’ll knock loudly next time,” he promised, and then he smiled.

The truth was that she’d been feeling jumpy all day. Pantalaimon was gone; he’d run off with Kaisa towards the south coast of the island to scope out some rumors of an approaching boat. Lyra had been frantically conferring with her alethiometer, trying to figure out ahead of them whether or not the boat was affiliated with the Church. It wasn’t—it was a shipping vessel wandering a bit off course—but that did little to reassure Lyra. Her alethiometer had told her that the Church had figured out that the Sveden trail was false and were actively searching for her whereabouts again. And still, their awful plans for her and the baby remained.

“It’s not your fault,” she admitted. “I just feel odd with Pan gone. And the Church’s plans…well, I don’t like having to hear about them.” Before he could ask her about those said plans, she asked: “What sort of food did the witches bring?”

“More than I expected. We can do loads with all this,” Malcolm said happily. He held up a cabbage. Lyra had never seen a person look so thrilled to be holding a cabbage. But they’d been eating dried seal meat for the past few days, and it had really begun to wear on them. When they’d heard the witches were bringing another bag of food down, it had been all they could talk about for an entire day.

Lyra set her palm on the edge of the table and pushed herself up so she could walk over and inspect their haul. There was cabbage, different sorts of dried meats and fish, stock cubes, carrots, leeks, turnips, celery, spinach, beetroot, radishes, and potatoes. At the very bottom of the bag, there were three small jars of some sort of berry preserve, and a block of a firm cheese wrapped in cloth. Malcolm was already writing down the recipes he was going to make. Lyra had to walk back to her seat to keep from taking some of the cheese. Her stomach rumbled unhappily.

“I could kiss Poly,” he said, pleased. “This is better than I ever could’ve imagined.”

“I’m sure she’d like that,” Lyra quipped.

Malcolm’s smile slipped a bit. He seemed to realize what he’d said. “Oh, right.” His ears were a bit red as he continued sorting through the items.

Lyra decided to take a break from tracking the Church’s every decision. It was getting emotionally daunting. Instead, she set her alethiometer gently to the side and pulled her notebook over to her. She sank into her writing quickly, the words flowing with ease, Malcolm chopping and sautéing in the background. Asta was humming something vaguely familiar, though Lyra had no idea where she had heard it before. Before she knew it, it was dark outside, and Malcolm was setting a bowl of something fragrant and steaming in front of her. Lyra looked up.

“Oh,” she said. She blinked. She set her pen down and rubbed at her cramped fingers. “What time is it?”

“Nearly seven. I made beet soup and roasted potatoes. Let’s eat before it gets cold!” He set a plate laden with roasted potatoes down beside her bowl of soup. Lyra’s stomach rumbled again. She hadn’t truly realized how starved she was for something other than dried seal meat until it was placed in front of her. She and Malcolm ate in record time, not pausing long enough to say even a word, and when their bowls and plates were empty, they had seconds. It was only then that Lyra felt nourished enough to slow down and actually savor what she was eating.

“It’s delicious,” she said fervently.

“It is,” agreed Malcolm. “Mind you, I don’t think it’d be this delicious were we not starving, but still.” He gestured towards her notebook with his spoon. “How’s it going? The book?”

Lyra nodded. “Good. I’ve recounted all the way up to the land of the dead. I’m going to go all the way to now, to the present. That way the public knows it _all_. They’ll know _every_ awful thing the Church has done or tried to do or planned to do. They’ll know the truth about the Authority. They’ll know that religion is nothing but a dictatorship of the gravest sort.”

Malcolm was quiet for a few minutes. He was clearly thinking hard. He got more potatoes and ate them while he thought. Finally, he said: “It’s not that I’m against it. I think the public _should_ know all of this. I think it’s the only way to sway public opinion enough to shatter the Church’s control once and for all. But I don’t know if you should write it as _you_. Maybe you can do it anonymously and change enough details that maybe the Church won’t know that you wrote it. Because once that’s out there…Lyra, they’ll come after you twice as hard.”

She shrugged. She scraped her spoon along the bottom of the bowl, trying to get every drop. “I know. What’s new? They’re always after me. The public won’t believe it if it comes from somebody anonymous. I think there’s a better chance they’d believe it coming from me. I’ve got to do _something_ and this is all I can think to do while I’m stuck here. Will and I…well. We know it’s going to come to a fight or even a war. We’re prepared for that. We’re willing to fight. But only if the baby is safe. _This_ might make my baby safe. Once the public knows everything the Church has been plotting, maybe they’ll be outraged and they’ll turn against them and they’ll say ‘no more!’. And then they won’t be able to come after my baby at all.”

He was smiling sadly come the end of her spiel. She knew that look well.

“You don’t think it’s possible.”

He dumped the last of the roasted potatoes onto her plate. “I think you give the people of our world more credit than they deserve,” he explained.

“You don’t need to give me the last of it,” she protested at once, pushing her plate back towards him. “Take some.”

“I can’t eat another bite. I’m stuffed.”

She was skeptical, but she ate the potatoes anyway. As she did, she thought about what he’d said. Maybe he was right. Maybe she _was_ giving the people of their world more credit than they deserved. Would they believe her? More importantly: would they _care_? Maybe they wouldn’t even care at all about the things the Church had done to her. Maybe they wouldn’t even care about the things that had happened with the Authority and with Metatron. Maybe they’d read her book and walk away from it yelling ‘ _heretic!’_ and be even more eager than the Church to punish her, to believe that her child was the antichrist, to dispose of them both. She wanted so terribly to believe that people were better than that…but she wasn’t sure. If she wrote this book and exposed all the Church’s lies, would she be helping to bring them down? Or helping them to bring _her_ down?

“I can ask my alethiometer later,” she decided. “It will tell me whether I should put this out into the world or not.”

“Good idea,” agreed Malcolm, relieved. He was scratching behind Asta’s ears. “Have you figured out ‘soon’ yet?”

Lyra’s expression twisted. “Not quite. I _think_ …I _think_ it’s saying ‘it depends’. But I’m not sure what it depends on exactly. It keeps telling me that Will has to make a choice, and whatever he decides will determine when he gets back to me. He’s either going to choose one way or another, and it also said that he was receiving guidance on the right choice to make, and that the right choice would lead him to me later than the first, but that it would be a more _permanent_ solution…I’m almost positive that he’s trying to decide whether to keep trying his old method of traveling or to search for the door. And I think the alethiometer wants him to choose to find the door, but I’m not sure why, nor am I entirely confident that I interpreted it correctly…” Lyra trailed off and sighed. She lowered her face into her hands and rubbed over her eyes. “Sometimes I think the baby makes it harder to read the alethiometer. It sounds silly, but my head feels foggy a lot, like all my thoughts are far away.” 

“It doesn’t sound silly at all. You’ve got a lot on you right now, physically _and_ mentally. And emotionally. And I’m sure our lack of food recently hasn’t helped. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if reading the alethiometer _did_ feel different,” Malcolm reassured her.

Lyra looked up. She chewed nervously on her bottom lip. “You don’t think it’ll be like this forever, do you?”

“Of course not,” he said, though Lyra didn’t know what sort of evidence he was basing that claim on.

“I dunno,” she said uneasily. “I’m something like twenty-two weeks now. That’s only a few weeks from the third trimester, and the third trimester is supposed to be awful like the first…I think everything’s only going to get worse.”

“Perhaps, but it can only last so long. Eventually the baby will be born.”

But that was an entirely different sort of problem. She made a face. He looked equally troubled seconds later.

“I really hope he makes it back before then,” Malcolm said.

“ _You_ hope that?” muttered Lyra sourly. She couldn’t say much else, though. The thought of going through childbirth without Will terrified her to the point that she couldn’t even speak. She sat in her own paralyzed fear and felt a deep wave of longing for Pantalaimon. She hated when he left. She knew he’d only done it because he was feeling just as cooped up, frustrated, and useless as Lyra was. But it was terribly hard on her to have him (and Will) gone.

* * *

 

Pantalaimon still wasn’t back by bedtime. Serafina sat up waiting with Lyra for a couple hours, but near midnight, she was called away by another witch. The witches were staying in the house Lord Asriel had resided in years and years ago, but they were constantly on the move. Serafina was trying to keep an eye on Lyra, continue ruling Lake Enara, _and_ keep an eye on the Church, and she seemed to be going nonstop because of it.

“They’ll be back soon,” Serafina told Lyra. “Kaisa said the journey would probably take ‘til morning since he’s flying low to keep with Pantalaimon.”

Lyra tried to look relaxed. “I’m not worried. Good luck with your meeting.”

The Lake Enara clan was meeting with another clan in the morning. Serafina had to fly back to Lapland that night to make it in time.

“I shall let you know how it goes,” promised Serafina, and she kissed Lyra’s forehead, set her palm briefly on her stomach, and then left.

Lyra tossed and turned in the silence of her room. Malcolm had gone to bed ages ago. She struggled to get comfortable, but the baby was restless, and _she_ was restless, and their restlessness was feeding off each other’s. Every time she turned, the baby woke and kicked and squirmed; every time the baby kicked at her ribs or squirmed, she woke.  After nearly an hour of it, she gave up. She lit the bedside lamp, pulled her alethiometer out from beneath her pillow, and framed her first question. _Has the Church realized that I’m on Svalbard?_

She tucked her hair behind her ears and followed each swing of the hand intently. The answer formed easily in her mind: _They think you are in Lapland._

Lyra frowned. She turned the wheels until the hands were pointing at the correct symbols. _Why do they think that?_

The response indicated that their alethiometrist had decoded _north_ and _witch_ , which had led him to guess the Witch-Lands. Lyra felt a thrill of fear. How long until he interpreted that result another way? How long until he decoded it properly?

 _Should I flee and go elsewhere?_ she asked.

 _No_ , the reply came. _You must stay and have the child here._

With her heart thumping wildly, and her fingers trembling as she moved the wheels, she asked: _With Will?_

She followed each movement of the hands. She stored away each symbol. And then she shook.

 _Yes_ , it said.

Her heart leapt. She accidentally twisted the wheels too far and missed the correct symbol four times before she got it right. _He’ll be here when the baby is born?_

 _Yes_ , it answered, _soon._

She felt her nose burn hot and her throat narrow quickly. The backs of her eyes ached with oncoming tears. So no matter what, “soon” had to be less than four months. He would be here when their child was born. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt so relieved. She lay flat on her back and pressed a hand over her racing heart, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

“It’s okay,” she said aloud, and Pan wasn’t there, so she must’ve been talking to the baby. Instead of feeling foolish, she felt tenderness flood her heart, and she found herself stroking over her stomach as if the baby could feel her reassuring touch. “He’s going to be here. With us, with you. And you’ll love him. And he’ll take such good care of you. And we’ll hold you so close, and it won’t matter what the Church is planning because we’ll never let them hurt you or do any of those awful things they say they’re going to do. I promise.”

She curled up on her side, her alethiometer pressed to her cheek, her hand on her stomach, and slipped into sleep, her mind spinning with all the things she was prepared to do to keep her child safe.

* * *

 

Her peace didn’t last long.

In her dreams, she was tied down and roaring with pain. In her dreams, she was helpless and horrified. In her dreams, it was a nightmare.

She came to gasping and quivering, her heart pounding and her hair sticking to the tears wetting her cheeks. She sat straight up and peered desperately around her room, trying to tell herself that it was a nightmare, that she was _okay_ , that the Church _hadn’t_ gotten to her, but the emotions from her dream were still vivid and oppressing. She couldn’t seem to shake the terror she’d felt. She had never felt anything like it.

She gathered the blankets in her arms and gripped them close, struggling to comfort herself, struggling to forget the traumatizing images from her nightmare. It wasn’t real, but it had _felt_ real, and in a way, she’d had to live through it.

The last thing she wanted was to go back to sleep and risk having another nightmare. She pulled her thick dressing gown on, put warm socks on her feet, and padded out into the sitting room. It was still hours before sunrise. Where was Pantalaimon? Lyra walked over and peered out the dark window, hoping she’d see a flash of Kaisa’s wings, but all she saw was moonlit snow. It gave her something else to fret about.

She wanted to drink something warm, but she didn’t want the kettle to wake Malcolm, so she sat on the sofa and drank cold water instead. The coldness made her shiver and it roused the baby. She pressed a hand over the spot she felt its kicks, and for a moment, she was certain she’d felt it from the outside, too.

“Are you okay?”

For the second time that day, Malcolm startled her. This time, though, she cried out audibly. Malcolm hurried over to her, his own dressing gown untied and his feet bare, his ginger hair disheveled from sleep.

“What is it? Are you okay? Is it the baby? What?” he asked frantically.

She shook her head mutely. It took her a moment to compose herself.

“No,” she finally said. “You just startled me. Everything’s okay. Sort of.”

He sat down beside her. He drew his dressing gown closed against the chill. “Sort of?” he pressed.

Lyra turned and looked at his light eyes. Before she’d even made the conscious decision to, she was telling him all about her dream—every bit of it. His face fell with every word she spoke. He covered his mouth with his hand near the end. And then, when her voice broke off into tears, he reached out and pulled her into his arms. It was only the second time he’d hugged her like this, but again, she was overcome with an instinctual feeling of security. Like it didn’t matter what was wrong because he’d fix it. Like nothing in the world could make him turn his back on her. Like how it must feel to be in a father’s arms. But it’s not as if Lyra would have known.

“That’s _horrifying_ ,” he told her. “Is that what the Church has been planning? Is that what your alethiometer told you before we left Oxford?”

She nodded numbly. He inhaled sharply in response.

“I always think the CCD can’t surprise me anymore. And then it does.”

“It’s not fair,” she heard herself say, her voice tearsoaked and trembling. “My baby didn’t do anything. It’s not fair.”

She had said it before—or at least thought it before—but she was arrested again by a swell of rage and frustration. She felt helpless under it.

“Well,” said Malcolm, heaving a steadying sigh. “I suppose there’s only one thing to do, really. And it’s what you said before. We’ve got to kill the Church.”

Lyra leaned back and looked up at him. Behind her tears, he was blurry and indistinct. “But earlier you said I shouldn’t—”

“Earlier was earlier, before this. Before I knew exactly what they had planned,” he said. He didn’t say _before you cried in my arms,_ but Lyra got the feeling that her emotional response to this was at least half the catalyst. He looked off towards the empty fireplace. “No, something will have to be done. It’s not enough to keep you safe. Just the fact that they are willing to do that…” he trailed off. He seemed to be talking mostly to himself. “I should contact Oakley Street, yes, that’s what I should do…I imagine there’s not a member who wouldn’t join our cause…when I tell Hannah what they’re planning…she loves you like her own, she won’t be happy…and Iorek—if I told _Iorek_ …I almost don’t want to be the messenger of that message…”

Lyra let him ramble to himself and she didn’t interrupt. She was too busy thinking her own frantic thoughts. On the one hand, she knew he was right: the Church had bypassed what was understandable or forgivable and should be punished. But on the other hand, this was yet another person she cared about that she was dragging into war. Sometimes she felt that was her only talent, really. Getting people involved in her own trouble.

“I’m sorry, Malcolm,” she whispered. But he either didn’t hear her or he didn’t think it worth commenting on. He continued right on.

“I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, and I understand why, but do I have your permission to tell Hannah _exactly_ what the Church is planning? She can get in contact with the people we’ll need on our side.”

Lyra thought about Dame Hannah, about the way she always set her soft, age-worn hand on Lyra’s shoulder, about her knowing eyes whenever Lyra told her most frequent lie during her first few years at St. Sophia’s ( _“I’m fine, really, I’m fine,”),_ about her generous wealth of knowledge and her patience and her kindness…

“I don’t know, Malcolm. I think…I need to talk to Pan first. I don’t want to make any decisions without Pan,” she decided.

He seemed to understand that—or at least he respected it—because he nodded and let the matter fall away at once.

“Since we’re both already up…breakfast?” he suggested.

It was the best idea she’d heard all night.

* * *

 

Pantalaimon returned an hour before dawn. He jumped whining into her lap, soaked with snow and trembling with excitement. Lyra hugged him to her fiercely, unsure whether she was irritated with him for being gone so long or just relieved that he was back.

“What took you so long?” she finally demanded. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t be gone that long ever again.”

“I didn’t plan to! But the way we planned on going was buried in snow and we had to go a longer way. Lyra, the boat’s fine—it’s not CCD and it’s already on its way back to where it came from.”

“I know. I asked my alethiometer.” Lyra heard the resentment in her own voice. From her spot across from them, Asta looked off to the side politely.

“Don’t be angry with me.”

“Well, I am angry with you. ‘Cause you left for a long time and you knew I couldn’t follow you, and what if you had been hurt, I wouldn’t be able to do a thing, would I? Except sit here and worry and wonder. And then if _you_ died, _we’d_ die—you, me, _and_ the baby— and I think that’s selfish of you.”

Pantalaimon’s jaw dropped. Lyra wasn’t finished.

“And I know you’re bored and frustrated in here. I am, too. And I know you like getting to use your ability to go far away, ‘cause you hardly get to use it in Oxford—what with people not used to seeing people without their dæmons—but I’m _not_ a witch. Not really. And even though it doesn’t physically hurt when we’re separated, it still _hurts_ , mainly now. And it’s not fair, Pan. I’m not running off to do reckless missions even though I want to because I know it’s not safe. It’s not safe for you to, either. Because if you die, we die, and if I have to stay cooped up here, you do, too.”

Malcolm and Asta were studiously avoiding looking in Lyra and Pan’s direction. Pantalaimon was bristling with offense.

“But I was only trying to help keep us safe, Lyra. You said it was okay for me to go help.”

“Had I known how long you’d be gone, and how worried I’d be, I wouldn’t have. So let’s chalk this one up to a learning experience and be done with it,” she snapped. She stabbed moodily at her breakfast after that. Pantalaimon grumbled under his breath, but he didn’t argue, and he didn’t move from her lap. She could feel his irritation and shame as easily as he could feel her sadness and anxiety. They understood each other even when they were ill with each other.

Later, when they went to walk around the main settlement, Pantalaimon pressed his damp nose to her cheek.

“I didn’t mean to be gone so long. I hated it, too,” he said softly.

Lyra reached up and set a hand on his fur. “I know,” she admitted. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just had a terrible night and I needed you there.”

“I sensed that. I was trying to get back home, I promise. I just wanted to help protect the baby, too. I thought I was helping.”

“You were,” Lyra sighed. “I just…I don’t know. I feel all out of sorts, Pan.”

He nuzzled her cheek sympathetically.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, and once she did that, she told him all about her nightmare last night, about telling Malcolm, about his proposal to tell Hannah so that she could tell a rebellion agency.

“I think—for now—we just need to focus on _this_ , the present,” Pantalaimon said. “I don’t think it hurts to let Malcolm fill Dame Hannah in—she has never been anything but a friend and ally to us, after all—but I do think we need to take this one step at a time. After the baby is here, we can worry about the rest.”

Sensible and logical. Something she hadn’t considered last night when she’d been trying to douse the emotions surging within her. She knew he’d see a solution that she couldn’t.

“I know you’re right. It’s just difficult because I’m so _angry_ at them. I want to…to…honestly, Pan, I want to make my way to Geneva right now and set fire to the seat of the Magisterium. I dream about it. But I _can’t_ …”

“No, you can’t. Even if you could somehow manage to make it there and do that without getting hurt or caught, what happens when Will comes here and you’re _gone_?”

It was a valid point. Lyra realized she’d yet to fill him in on the most important thing she’d discovered, but as she replayed it in her mind, it flew from her to him. He trembled excitedly against her neck.

“By the time the baby is here?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad,” Pan said, relieved. “Kaisa told me he could feel every single one of Serafina’s contractions—every one. So I don’t think I’m going to be much comfort or help to you.” After a short pause, Pantalaimon made a thoughtful humming noise. “Maybe the golden monkey hated us so much because he never even asked Mrs. Coulter to cheat on Mr. Coulter with Lord Asriel and get pregnant with you, and he _certainly_ never asked to go through the excruciating pain of childbirth.”

“Or maybe he was just an evil little—” Lyra stopped suddenly as a cub and his mother passed by them, but Pantalaimon heard the word she didn’t say.

“That too.”

* * *

 

There was something so excruciatingly bizarre about waiting _three weeks_ for a passport.

To have gotten this far—to know generally where the door between their worlds was—and then to have their plans foiled by something so banal as a _passport_ was almost too odd and frustrating for Will to wrap his head around. He wanted to seize the Post Office worker by the front of his shirt and exclaim: _You have no idea the lengths I’ve gone to to get this far and you’re going to hold us up over a passport renewal?!_

But he knew better. And had it only been him, he would’ve forked out the money to rush his passport so he’d have it sooner and wouldn’t have to wait so long. But Dr. Malone was going, too. And his mother. And the trip would be pricey enough without tripling their passport fees. It was disorientating to remind himself about money in the grand scheme of things—of trying to find his pregnant lover in an alternate world—but without money, he wouldn’t be able to get to her at all, so it was a necessary concern.

Still, though: it was torturous. They couldn’t do much of anything while they waited for their renewed passports. They couldn’t start booking their travel because they didn’t have their updated passport numbers, so really all they could do was sit and wait. And Will had a lot of reservations about his mum going, and the longer they put off leaving, the stronger those doubts became. She had been doing wonderfully lately, but he couldn’t help but feel like she had no idea what she was getting herself into. He wasn’t confident that she could handle it. But he didn’t want to leave her alone here, either, and Mary insisted that she was going, and his mum insisted that _she_ was going, too. She had gotten genuinely angry with Will when he’d tried to tell her that she couldn’t go. She’d insisted, over and over, that she _had_ to go, that Lyra would need her, would need a mother there to help her figure things out, and Will had had a hard time arguing against it when his mother was presenting it as something both her _and_ Lyra needed. He had always done everything for those two women.

Finally, after sitting down and explaining the reality to his mum (that they could end up getting stuck in Lyra’s world, that they might die as his dad had, that they could get swept up in a war, that things were _terribly dangerous_ ), he told her to make the best decision for herself. And, of course, she chose to go with him.

“I’m not staying back here _again_ while somebody I love leaves,” she’d told Will, her voice trembling with passionate resolve. “I’d rather go with you and meet her, and my grandchild, and have ten good years, than stay here alone wondering what happened to you and Mary, and Lyra and the baby, for twenty horrible ones.”

He couldn’t logically argue with that. He felt the same way. He hoped that the door between worlds was trustworthy, but he knew there was always a chance it would end up closed and he’d get stuck. But he’d choose ten years with his family over never being with them at all every time. It was a different question than the one he’d faced when he was just a boy. Before, it had just been about him and Lyra and their feelings. And choosing to live a good long life in their own world was the right thing to do. But now that there was a child thrown into it… _his_ child…a child that would need him…well, the question was different now. The stakes were higher. And he no longer felt that staying in his own world was noble. This time, it felt cowardly. It wasn’t just about _him_ anymore. He wasn’t a father yet, but already he felt the protective stirrings of one in his heart. It astonished him sometimes.  

It was that same protective drive that led him to phone about their passports. It had been three weeks and two days since they’d sent off for renewals, and he couldn’t wait a moment longer. He argued politely at first—and then rudely when he realized how unwilling to help him the person he was talking to was. They didn’t think two days was a big deal. To Will, it was huge. Lyra would already be around twenty-two weeks now. In the best possible scenario, assuming she carried to exactly full-term, that left him with eighteen weeks to get to her. Mary thought that was plenty of time, but there was no telling how long it would take to get to where they were going, find that door, and then get to Lyra within her own world while also avoiding the suspicion of the CCD. And it’d be difficult; Mary and his mother wouldn’t have visible dæmons, which would mean they’d have to travel under the radar to avoid suspicion, which would add even _more_ time onto their travel. The clock was ticking faster than he could keep up, and so, to him, two days was a massive sacrifice.

“We can’t even book our trip without those passports,” he snapped at the person on the phone, frustration threaded through his booming voice. “We have quite a lot of traveling to do in not a lot of time—”

“Perhaps you should have paid for our premium or fast-track service,” the worker countered, bored and entirely unconcerned.

“Yeah, well, perhaps you should go get—!” Kirjava nipped Will’s left hand lightly, stopping his rude words before he spat them into the receiver. It was unlike him. He _felt_ unlike himself. Then again, he’d always found it difficult to be patient and polite when it was Lyra (or his mum) on the line. He took a deep, calming breath despite himself, urged by Kirjava’s stern gaze. “Can you please tell me how much longer it will be?”

“Certainly, sir,” the worker said, false cheer in her tone. “Let me just pull that up now…”

He was given a vague window— _“probably within the week”_ —and then the call ended. Will slammed his fist into the kitchen table and ground his teeth.

And so the wait continued.

* * *

 

Lyra was sitting on the snowy steps just off her patio, the alethiometer in her gloved hands, Pantalaimon in her lap, and she was being watched.

She knew who it was without looking. The cub had been watching her for weeks—months, really. Lyra had seen her slip away from her mother on many occasions to run over and watch Lyra with rapt attention as Lyra conferred with her alethiometer. Her mother always caught the cub before Lyra could say anything to her and dragged her away by the nape of her neck, scolding her for “bothering King Iorek’s guest.” For better or for worse, the panserbjørne knew how cherished Lyra was to Iorek, and most went out of their way to leave her be now. If she spoke to them, they were courteous, kind, and helpful, but few approached her first. Lyra wasn’t sure if they thought she feared them—she didn’t—or if they thought she wanted to be alone—equally untrue—but she tried to respect their boundaries.

And then there was the cub—Aobel.

Lyra knew she was one of Iorek’s cubs because she recognized the cub’s mother: the she-bear Maja frequented Iorek’s company after Iorek had won her affections half a decade prior. Aobel also knew that she was King Iorek’s daughter, and despite the typical noninvolvement of fathers in panserbjørne culture, she thought herself quite important because of it. Lyra had formed a quick fondness for the little bear as she watched her evade her mother’s supervision time after time, choosing instead to exercise her freedom by playing a one-sided game of hide and seek in which her mother frantically searched everywhere for her and Aobel sat nearby and laughed.

Lyra had finally told Maja that she didn’t mind the cubs coming up to her, but Maja had still seemed wary. She’d told Lyra that the cubs were too rough, and anyway, they were busy learning how to hunt. But Aobel ran off from her mother time after time, trying to get close enough to Lyra to talk, just as she was doing now. Lyra looked up and met the cub’s eyes: Aobel beamed. Lyra waved once, but before she could say anything, Maja came growling after Aobel and dragged her off. Lyra decided to ask the cub’s _other_ parent for permission. So she packed up her alethiometer, bundled up in more layers, and hurried down to the sea, Pantalaimon running ahead of her. She found Iorek dragging a dead seal out of the water by its throat. She waited patiently until he’d thrown it down on the ice, and then she walked over to stand beside him.

“Be careful,” Pantalaimon warned her, his eyes trained on the ice beneath their feet. Lyra evaded a weak spot in the ice and continued on.

“Iorek?” she asked.

He hefted the seal up. He didn’t seem surprised to see her even though multiple witches had advised her not to walk out on the ice. “Yes?”

“I want to visit with your cubs, but Maja won’t let them see me.”

Iorek walked slowly from the ice, careful to keep it balanced so Lyra didn’t fall into the water. She was grateful: she didn’t remember her balance being so terrible, but lately, she was the opposite of graceful. She followed after him carefully and crossed off the half-frozen water and onto the snowy bank.

“My cubs?” he repeated, puzzled. “Why?”

“Because they’re adorable and clever.”

“You’re talking about the she-bear, I’m presuming. The boy’s not very…” he trailed off and sighed. Pan laughed quietly.

Lyra thought about the male in Aobel’s litter. He was often seen clinging to his mother and crying. Just yesterday he’d whined nonstop because he stepped on a particularly sharp piece of ice.

“Well, I am talking about Aobel, but I’m sure Iokem’s clever, too…”

Iorek shifted the seal over to his left shoulder. “I think Aobel’s got a better chance of being Svalbard’s first queen than Iokem’s got a chance of being king. What exactly do you want with them?”

He still seemed puzzled by Lyra’s interest. Male bears had little to do with their offspring; Iorek paid closer attention to his than most just because they were next in line for the throne, but even he rarely did much more than observe them from afar.

“I want to talk with them. They’re your cubs, Iorek. I want to know them,” she insisted. “I don’t understand why Maja won’t let me see them.”

They were approaching the edge of the settlement now. Iorek tossed the dead seal onto the pile he and other bears were amassing. All the bears worked together to hunt for the bears who were too ill or old to do it themselves.

“Because I told her not to,” he said.

He turned and began heading back towards the sea ice. Lyra followed.

“What? Why?” she demanded.

“Have you _seen_ the way they play? They’re wild and unpredictable.”

Lyra suddenly realized why all the bears were treating her with such caution. “You’ve told _all_ the bears to leave me alone.”

“Yes.” He stepped confidently onto a patch of ice. “Don’t follow: this ice feels weak.”

Lyra listened to him because she could see the thinning parts of it. She stepped over onto another nearby patch instead, leaping carefully from floating chunk to chunk, until she could reunite with Iorek on another patch of ice.

“Why? They’ve never hurt or threatened me before. They’d never do that,” she insisted.

“I know. But I promised you you’d be safe here, and I intend to keep my word. I’m not taking any risks. And letting my cubs loose around you would be a risk.” With that, he dove back into the water, graceful and light as air. Lyra was beginning to feel a bit unsteady so she lowered down to sit on the ice. Her furs kept her mostly dry.

“Bears bury themselves in maternity dens when they’re pregnant,” Pan reminded her. “These bears probably think you’re mad for wandering about with all of them. Iorek probably just thinks you’re really fragile and he’s worried.”

Lyra guessed it made more sense when she considered that, but it still irritated her. The little bear obviously wanted to talk to her, so why couldn’t Lyra see her?

She asked Iorek that once he reemerged. She had to grab onto the ice with her nails as best as she could as he climbed back up; it tilted enough to make her think for a moment that she’d slide in the water. But as soon as Iorek and the seal were back on it, it evened out.

“Because she’s still wild and thoughtless,” Iorek answered. “She might hurt you on accident. She doesn’t know her own size.”

“Well, what if you were there, too?” suggested Lyra. “Then you can scold her if she gets out of hand, and I know she’d listen to _you_ , Iorek.”

He grumbled. She followed him up to the pile of seals. He threw it down. She thought he’d turn to go back to the ice without answering her, but finally, he stopped walking and looked down at her.

“You really want to see them?”

“I do.”

“They’re only cubs.”

“They’re your cubs! I want to see them,” she insisted.

He sighed. “Fine. I shall speak with Maja. Now go back to your cottage; you’re shivering.”

She was content to follow that advice, happy that she’d gotten her way.

* * *

 

Lyra was unable to button her decade-old furs, but she was warm despite. The panserbjørn cub sprawled over her legs was acting as quite an efficient heater.

“Does it ever talk?” the cub asked curiously. Lyra watched her tiny, deft paws—her claws dirty with stained snow and the colored-ice panserbjørn cubs played with—as she turned the alethiometer around curiously.

“Out-loud?” clarified Lyra. “No, it never talks out-loud. Just in my head.”

The cub had shown up outside Lyra’s cottage that morning, half her fur dyed cobalt from the colored-ice she played with so frequently, Iorek watching sternly from a distance. The little bear seemed just as thrilled to be on an outing with _King Iorek_ as she was to see Lyra. Lyra had bundled up and gone outside with the little bear, and after the bear stared wondrously at Lyra for a few moments, she’d asked about the alethiometer she’d seen Lyra using so often. They’d been sitting together on Lyra’s snowy patio for nearly half an hour now while Aobel turned the alethiometer over and over in her paws.

“What is it saying now?” Aobel asked. She leaned over and held her ear over the alethiometer as if she still expected it to speak. Lyra laughed.

“Nothing because I haven’t asked it anything. Watch, I’ll show you. What’s something you want to know?”

Aobel considered that. She looked up at the white sky as she did. Finally, she looked up at Lyra and said: “I want to know when my brother will go away for good.”

Lyra laughed at once. Aobel took offense to that.

“I’m _serious_ ,” she told Lyra, her tiny teeth bared, every soft hair of her downy coat bristling with offense. Iorek growled fiercely in warning; Aobel quickly dropped her attitude.

“Right, sorry,” said Lyra quickly, somberly, though she was desperately trying not to laugh. “Why do you want him gone?”

“He’s annoying. He takes _all_ my colored-ice. And one time I packed it all into a giant ball and he pushed it into the water.”

“That _is_ annoying,” Lyra agreed. “How about I ask when your brother will be kinder?”

Aobel nodded. Lyra took the alethiometer from her paws and framed the question easily. The response she got made her laugh again. When she fell from her trance and looked back at Aobel, Aobel had her nose inches from Lyra’s face, waiting expectantly.

“What?!” Aobel demanded.

“It says _you_ have to be kind to him _first_. Are you a bully, Aobel?”

“I’m _not_!” Aobel exclaimed, furious. She let out the tiniest growl Lyra had ever heard, mashing her teeth afterwards. Iorek rose to scold Aobel, but Lyra shook her head at him to tell him it was okay. Then she leaned back from Aobel as if terribly afraid of her. She crossed her arms over her prominent middle like she thought the bear might hurt her and the baby, her eyes wide with fright. This pleased the little bear immensely; she softened at once and beamed.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she reassured Lyra. She set a small paw on Lyra’s arm comfortingly. The rough, dirty pads of her paw snagged a bit on Lyra’s furs as she patted her. “You’re my father’s friend, so you’re my friend, too.”

Lyra pretended to sigh in relief. “Oh, _thank you_ , Aobel. You frightened me for a moment.”

“I’m sorry,” Aobel said, but she didn’t look it. She had her chin in the air like some noble beast in her own domain. She glanced quickly over at Iorek as if to make sure her father had seen her being so ferocious and strong. He was watching them both with a somewhat sardonic look, but Aobel seemed to think any attention from him at all was praise, because she inflated even more. Lyra had rarely seen any creature so proud.

“I’m a princess, you know,” Aobel told her only moments after that. “My father is King Iorek. That’s why he’s here with me. He wouldn’t go with any other cub. Just _his_ cub.”

“I know you’re his cub,” Lyra said. “That’s why you’re so clever and strong.”

“Yeah,” Aobel agreed, her voice trembling with pride. “My mother says Iokem will be king when King Iorek dies, but I don’t think my brother is good enough to be king. Kings don’t cry. He cut his paw when he was hunting and he cried and cried.”

“Hmm,” said Lyra thoughtfully. “You don’t cry?”

“ _Never_. I’ve never cried ever.”

“Wow,” said Lyra, feigning awe. “Perhaps you should be queen instead.”

Oh, she had thought Aobel was pleased before, but at _that_ comment, the bear seemed to expand with joy.

“Mmhmm,” Aobel agreed. She acted as if she’d thought that all along, but Lyra’s comment had clearly given her a shock. She sat in Lyra’s lap for a while longer, watching happily as Lyra messed with the alethiometer, utterly ignoring her dad’s periodic warning growls as she moved too suddenly or excitedly in Lyra’s lap.  

“Lyra Silvertongue?” Aobel asked.

“Yes?”

“Are all she-humans round?”

Lyra fought back her urge to laugh again, knowing now that Aobel didn’t appreciate being laughed at. She set a hand on her stomach. “No, I’ve got a baby in here. Women aren’t round.”

Aobel perked up with interest. “A _baby_?”

“A human cub.”

“How many?”

“Just one.”

“That’s lucky. I wish I had been just one cub when I was born. When will you build your den?”

Lyra pointed back at the cottage. “That’s my den.”

“Ah,” nodded Aobel. That made sense to her. “But why is there a man-human in the den? The orange one.”

Lyra couldn’t keep from laughing that time. “Malcolm.”

“Why is there a Malcolm in there?”

Lyra explained that men and women coexisted. Aobel was interested in this.

“And is he the cub’s father?”

“No,” said Lyra, and she might’ve laughed at the idea, but instead she just felt a great wave of sadness as she was painfully reminded of Will’s absence.

“So human fathers don’t—”

“They do,” interrupted Lyra, her throat narrowing dangerously. “Human fathers stay with their children for their entire lives…well, the good ones, anyway. My baby’s father got separated from us. He would be here if he could.”

“Oh. Will he be back?”

“I think so. I hope so. My alethiometer says he will be.”

“When?”

“Soon,” said Lyra, and then she sighed. Her sadness was threatening to overtake her again, but then Aobel cocked her head to the side and asked: “Is he orange, too?”

She had to laugh again. She smoothed the cub’s fur, amused by her and growing quite fond. “No. He’s not orange.”

“Too bad,” lamented Aobel. “So the baby won’t be orange, either.”

“No,” agreed Lyra, and Aobel sighed. Lyra guessed she liked the splash of color in the somewhat colorless world of the Arctic. It was probably why the cubs loved the colored ice so much, too.

Now that Aobel realized the ‘roundness’ she’d been leaning against was a baby, she seemed hesitant to lie against Lyra as she had been.

“I might squash the cub,” she told her gravely. “I’m very strong and big.”

For as tough a cub as she was, Aobel was very cuddly. She had crawled willingly into Lyra’s lap within the first twenty minutes of them meeting and now seemed reluctant to leave it. Lyra was fine with it because it was Iorek’s cub— _and_ it was really cold out here. Lyra’s furs from her cottage were not quite as warm when they were unable to be buttoned.

“You’re strong and big, yes, but as long as you’re gentle, it’s fine,” Lyra reassured her.

“I can be gentle. You have to be gentle when you make things with metal. Like armor. I’m going to get armor one day. I started making one piece already but then I got caught in the forging room.”

Lyra asked Aobel all about what her armor would look like. It was the proper question to ask a cub, apparently: Aobel talked for ages and ages about her future armor, her words passionate and idealistic. Lyra listened intently, and the few times she glanced over at Iorek, she saw him listening intently, too.

“All right,” Iorek finally said. “Come, Aobel. Tell Lyra goodbye.”

Aobel wouldn’t dare argue with Iorek. She leaned up and bumped her wet nose against Lyra’s. “Goodbye, Lyra.” She leaned over and bumped her nose against Lyra’s massive stomach, too. Iorek huffed, but before he could snatch Aobel up by the back of her neck, she’d straightened. “Bye, cub. When will the cub be here?”

Iorek used a massive paw to push Aobel off Lyra and back onto the snow. She hardly seemed to notice. She was waiting for Lyra to answer.

“In the spring.”

Aobel brightened. “Oh, but the spring isn’t that far off!”

Lyra felt a strange tangle of excitement and fear. “Yes,” she admitted. And then she felt a horrible empty feeling sink her stomach to her toes—because she was _still_ waiting for Will.

“King Iorek, can I _please_ play with the human-cub when it’s here?!” Aobel pleaded at once.

“Absolutely not. Goodbye, Lyra.”

Lyra waved. “Bye. Thank you, Iorek. Bye, Aobel. Good luck with your armor.”

“Good luck with your human-cub!”

Once Iorek and his cub disappeared into the snowy mounds surrounding the cottage, Lyra looked over towards the windowsill, where Pantalaimon had been resting. He liked to lean against the warm glass.

“I like her,” Pan said, amused.

“Me too,” Lyra smiled. “She’s brave like Iorek.” Lyra reached out and grabbed onto the bench to her left. She carefully hoisted herself up. It seemed to get harder and harder as each day passed. Pantalaimon jumped down and wound his way between her ankles as soon as she was standing.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad staying here for good,” mused Pantalaimon. They walked together into the warm house. The smell of sweetened ginger greeted them; Lyra stopped in place and grinned. They’d received baking ingredients with the last shipment of groceries—to warm their spirits a bit in the dead of winter, Serafina had said—and Malcolm had been baking all sorts of wonderful things lately.

“I mean,” Pantalaimon continued, helping Lyra untie her winter boots, “the child could be friends with Aobel and the other cubs. They accept us here. And Aobel would be a great friend. We would have been friends with her when we were younger, I’m sure of it. You two would’ve got on well.”

“Maybe she would be a great friend to the baby,” agreed Lyra. She held onto the wall and stepped carefully out of her boots. Pantalaimon heaved them into the box beside the patio door. “But the child isn’t a panserbjørn, Pan. It doesn’t matter how respected we are here. We’ll never really fit in.”

She was certain of that now, but that had initially been part of her reason for seeking Aobel out. As her pregnancy continued progressing, and as the Church continued following the witches’ multiple false leads, she realized that the child would be here soon and that it would need a safe place to stay and grow up. She was comfortable here, on Svalbard, in her cottage, with Iorek nearby, and so far she’d stayed out of the CCD’s grasps. Part of her had hoped that she’d meet the cubs and be confident in her child’s ability to meld right into panserbjørne life and culture. But after talking to Aobel, she realized there were still so many important parts of panserbjørne life that her child could _never_ take part in fully. She didn’t want the child feeling like an outcast for its entire life.

“Well, we’ll have to stay here for a bit regardless,” Pan argued. “For you to recover and for the baby to get old enough to travel.”

“I know _that_. I just meant we can’t stay here _forever_. We’ll have to pick somewhere else to live with the child when its older—when we’re here in our world, anyway. I imagine we could live anywhere in Will’s.” Lyra walked over and stood beside Malcolm at the worktop. Asta was watching as he kneaded dough, but she looked up and rubbed faces with Pantalaimon as soon as he jumped up on the surface to join her. “Malcolm, you agree, right? A child isn’t a panserbjørn.”

He glanced over at Lyra. “A child certainly isn’t a panserbjørn. It’s a human.”

“You know what I mean. Do you think my child could grow up here?”

“Could? Yes. Should? That’s your decision and I’m sure you’ll make the right one. Should these be in little star shapes or little snowflake shapes?”

“You’re not very helpful today, Dr. Polstead.”

“Sometimes you have to encourage your students to spread their wings and think for themselves,” he jested. Lyra elbowed him.

“Stars,” she decided, answering his previous question. “Snowflakes will take too long.”

While he went back to baking—his new favorite hobby—Lyra went back to writing. She had been writing a letter of sorts to Will for a couple weeks now; she’d finished her exposé on the Church a month ago. Malcolm was in the process of editing it for her, though he was a terribly picky editor, and Lyra had gotten annoyed with him and told him to just change whatever he thought needed to be changed grammar-wise and to stop nagging her about it. She wasn’t really sure how far he’d gotten because of that.

 _Will,_ she wrote, _I finally got to meet one of Iorek’s cubs today. She’s a proud little thing. I liked her. The baby has been relatively quiet this afternoon which, I’ll admit, has been really nice…some of its kicks are starting to hurt. Still, I think I’ll be worried by tonight if it doesn’t—_

She stopped writing; she felt the baby twist and kick out, hitting her rib squarely. She winced slightly, but she snorted right afterwards.

 _Nevermind,_ she wrote. _I just got quite the kick. My fault for saying the baby’s been quiet, I suppose…_

She wrote about everything the baby had done that day and every concern and thought that’d been nagging at her mind. She wrote pages on what she might do after the birth. They would stay here, of course, because by then, Will should be with her. But where _would_ they go after that? Where would they be safe in her world? Lyra had planned on having the baby, sending her work on the Church out in the world, and waiting to see what the public would do. But if it came to an all-out war, where would the baby be safe? Maybe in Will’s world, with Mary and Elaine? It was the only solution she could think of. But then, another problem: what if the baby couldn’t stay in one world the entire time? What if the baby had to switch between them, like she and Will would have to do? So perhaps they’d need to settle somewhere close to that door, wherever it was, so they could come and go as needed. If there was going to be a war in this world, Lyra would want her baby safe in the other. But would _she_ want to leave the baby? It hadn’t been a question before, but now, with the baby growing so much and starting to seem more like a _real_ baby…well, she was already terribly attached. When she thought of having it and then handing it off to somebody—even if that person was Dr. Malone or Mrs. Parry, even if it was for the ultimate good of taking down the Church—her eyes burned and she felt the most terrible sort of anxiety, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Her entire being rebelled against the idea of parting from the child. Not for the first time, she had to wonder how and why her mother had done what she’d done (given her up like she was nothing).

Her entire world was built on uncertainties right now. She didn’t sleep much.

* * *

 

Once they had their passports and they’d sorted out all the inevitable trouble the airlines had to give them, getting to Namibia had been almost shockingly easy. That should have been his first warning.

They’d booked accommodations over the phone at a camp located on the Torra Conservancy’s lands. And when they’d arrived, it’d been an easy transition from the truck to their thatched, adobe-style cabin. There were no issues with their reservations, the cabin was much nicer than the photos suggested, and everybody was friendly and helpful.

The problem, however, was that the elephants were nowhere to be found.

“We’re here to see the desert elephants,” Mary had told one of the staff, answering his question on why they’d chosen that location for holiday. “It’s fascinating how they’ve adapted to the desert.”

When the man’s smile had faltered a bit, Will’s heart had faltered, too.

“What?” Will asked at once, his tone grave.

“The elephants are difficult to spot lately,” he admitted to them, somewhat sheepishly, as if he thought they’d get angry with _him_ for it. “Usually they wander up and you can see them from your porch…but lately, they’ve been hours and hours out. Sometimes we see them when we take tourists on vehicle tours. Sometimes.”

Will felt his mum reach out and take his hand. He looked off to the side, his jaw working as he tried to contain the wild rush of emotion he felt at those words.

“We’re patient,” his mum said.

“Right,” Mary agreed, smiling. “It’s beautiful here. We can wait.”

Well, they’d been there for nearly six weeks now, and waiting was all they’d done. For the first two weeks, Will had been dragged along on all the typical touristy trips with Mary and his mum. They’d seen baboons, hyenas, rhinos, giraffes, and even a lion—but no elephants. They’d explored along the Huab River, a low-lying, tranquil river surrounded by desert plains, and further out in the valleys and ravines. With it being the wet season, there were rarely any tourists other than themselves at the camp, so the staff seemed eager to drag them along to wherever they wanted to go, and at the start, they figured they’d really go anywhere.

“We may stumble upon the elephants as we explore the area,” Mary had whispered to Will as they dragged him on yet _another_ safari tour.

But they didn’t. After those first two weeks, he’d put his foot down and insisted that the only way they’d find the door would be to do some genuine exploring on their own. But it was approaching the hottest part of the year now, and the brief, periodic rains in the afternoons did little to lessen the heat. There were extreme temperature fluctuations, too, ones that Will didn’t have much experience with. It could get to a scorching 40 degree Celsius in the desert, but by the time the sun had disappeared or one ventured towards the valleys, it would drop rapidly to the point that Will would need a jacket. They made little progress, and Will soon forgot what it was like to have an unburnt neck and face.

After four weeks of him, Mary, and his mum wandering aimlessly (and, honestly, dangerously) around the conservancy every day, their guide—Monica—intervened.

“What exactly are you looking for?” she questioned curiously.

His mum looked at Mary. Mary looked at Will. Will looked down at Kirjava, curled unhappily in his lap. She hated the sand and hadn’t been very happy as of late. She blinked languidly at him. He understood.

“Elephants,” Will finally answered. “Like we said. The desert elephants.”

Monica looked oddly at him. “I’ve met many odd tourists, and many wanted to see the elephants. But not as desperately as _you_ want to see them.”

“I’m a scientist,” Mary said. “I’m writing a book about them. It’s crucial to my research. I’ll lose my funding if I don’t publish something soon.”

“Ah,” she said, and then she smiled. This seemed to make more sense to her. “How long can you stay? If you stay until the dry season, you’ll have a much better chance at finding them. I’m surprised you came so early.”

“The dry season starts…May, right?” Mary asked.

Monica smiled. “Yes.”

Will looked desperately at Mary. She met his scorching expression and nodded once to show she understood.

“We need to be back by the end of March,” she said. “Is it likely we’ll see the elephants any time before the dry season begins?”

Monica shrugged. “It’s not _impossible_ , but it’s much more difficult. You’ve already seen that.”

Will felt physically sick. If that were true—if they had little chance of seeing the elephants during wet season—then that meant he wouldn’t get to Lyra before the baby was born. They had to find the elephants to find the door. And the baby would be born late March at the very latest. He couldn’t wait ‘til May. He _couldn’t_. He couldn’t stand to wait another moment more. Every day he was here was a day he was missing something, a day that Lyra might have needed him, a day that he had let her down. She would have entered her third trimester already, and he was still no closer than he’d been six weeks ago to finding her.

His pain must have shown on his face. Monica looked from him to Mary to his mum, eying their distraught expressions, and then she smiled again, tentatively.

“I know you’ve been…eager to go off on your own these past few weeks. But maybe you might like me to come along and help a bit. I know the area better, after all,” she offered.

She was offering to go off on her own time and help them, separate from the tour schedule of her job. Will didn’t take that offer lightly.

“You don’t mind?” his mum asked, surprised.

“You really need these elephants,” Monica said. Somehow, she seemed to understand. Maybe she just read the desperate urgency on Will’s face.

“Thank you so much,” Mary said, taking Monica’s hand in hers. The women smiled at each other.

“We’ll begin in the morning,” Monica said. “I don’t work until the late afternoon. I will be here as soon as the sun peaks over the horizon.”

“We’ll be ready,” Mary said.

Will hardly slept. He tossed and turned in the oppressive heat, fitful, unhappy, and uncomfortable.

* * *

Right then, Will longed for the Arctic climate that Lyra was in. He stopped and leaned against a boulder, sweat dripping down his face in torrents, his breathing labored. The boiling sun made every bit of exertion infinitely harder; his entire body felt aflame from the heat of the sun and he longed for some reprieve from it.

“We’ve got about an hour east ‘til we’re there,” Monica was telling them. Her voice was chipper. She was a good couple of yards ahead of them, seemingly resistant to the extreme temperatures. Will was having a difficult time focusing on what she was saying. He was nauseated and lightheaded, and his head was throbbing. He longed to sit down and drink water, but he had to keep up with Monica (had to find the elephants, find the door, find Lyra).

“Okay, now try looking at me but just to the side,” Mary said. She was a little ways behind Will, talking with his mum as they walked. She had been trying to teach his mum how to see her dæmon for days now. “Don’t think about it; don’t actively _try_ to see him, but just…look.”

Will slowed a bit. He felt Kirjava bump into his leg, and when he looked down, he saw she was walking unsteadily.

“I don’t know if…oh! Oh, I think…oh, it’s gone now, but Mary—is your Kirjava a bird?!”

“ _Yes!_ ” cried Mary, overjoyed. She had never told his mum what her dæmon was or wasn’t. “You’ve done it! Try again, now that you know what to do!”

“Okay!” his mum said eagerly.

The heat didn’t seem to be taking much from her. But then again, she and Mary had slept well last night, and Will had gotten maybe a half-hour’s sleep before it was time to begin their hike. His mum was doing much better in general, actually. She seemed so much like the mother from his early childhood years here that it astounded him. He didn’t know what was helping her so much—if it was the change in scenery, the adventure, or maybe just the feeling of having a _mission_ —but she was happier and more coherent than he could remember her being in decades.

“Okay…I see…oh! Oh, _God_! Wow!” his mum’s thrilled voice rang out around them. Will wanted to turn around and look, but he got the feeling that if he stopped walking, he’d never be able to start again. He was terribly dizzy now.

“It’s a swan,” Mary told her happily. “He’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

“I’ve had him all along? My entire life?” his mum sounded incredibly moved.

“Yes. He’s you—your soul.”

“My soul is beautiful,” she said, and Will had never heard a person sound so surprised.

Mary laughed gently. “Oh, come here, you’re silly—of course it is.”

The world tilted sideways. Will went with it. He felt the dry, rocky ground tear into his shoulder as he collapsed over. His mum shrieked.

“Will? Will!”

His pulse was racing. He had never felt so tired. He just needed to rest his eyes…that was all…rest his eyes and cool down…

And he was cooling down. Rapidly. He went from lying on the hot, searing ground to feeling the whip of glacial wind against his face. The sun turned from tormenting to feeble. It took him a moment to process what had happened. And then he felt a shock flow through him, a shock so powerful he couldn’t move at all—not that he was brave enough to anyway. He remembered the very first few times he’d traveled where movement had kicked him back. There was _no way_ he was going to let that happen to him now.

But it was so hard. Because there, only a few long strides separated from him, was Lyra. At the sight of her, he felt his heart crack open, and all the love and longing he felt for her surged out. He felt his eyes grow hot—or what would have been his eyes; he didn’t even know if he was physical yet.

“Don’t move,” Kirjava warned him, her voice low and aching with as much restrained pain as Will was feeling.

“I’m not,” he assured her.

She was walking in the snow with a panserbjørn cub. It was bouncing along ahead of her, chattering or singing, while Lyra strolled behind it, Pantalaimon draped around her neck. Will’s first thought was that he couldn’t believe how big her stomach was now. She was hugely pregnant, larger than he’d ever anticipated she’d be by now, the roundness pushing past the limits of her too-small furs. He looked at her, and he felt his heart swelling, and all he could think was that she was endearing, and radiant, and lovely. All he wanted was to rush over to her and take her into his arms, to tell her how hard he was trying to find her, to apologize for leaving her, to ask her how she was feeling and how he could help—

Kirjava was bounding ahead of him now, heading straight for Pantalaimon and Lyra. He could clearly see her, and as she walked, her paws made impressions in the snow. Will’s heart lurched. If Kirjava could move…that meant…

The panserbjørn cub saw him first. It stopped in place, its eyes wide.

“Man!” it exclaimed, its voice high and shaking in fright. “Man-human! Not orange! Man!”

Lyra quickly looked up and followed the cub’s gaze. The fear on her face told Will she probably thought it was somebody from the CCD. But when their eyes locked, every ounce of fear melted away. Pantalaimon leapt down from her neck and ran towards Kirjava; the two collided and went rolling into the snow together, sounds of joy spilling from their mouths. Lyra’s smile was immediate and breathtaking. It knocked the breath from Will. He felt urgency fill him, and it pushed him forward, stride by stride, until he was throwing his arms around her. She threw herself into his embrace with just as much enthusiasm. He could hardly grip her as close as he wanted; her stomach was wedged between them, but that only made him smile and laugh and cry and—

He felt heat against his scalp.

“No,” he blurted, horrified, and he almost vomited right then and there. “No, no, please, no…”

“What?!” Lyra asked urgently. She reached up and held his face in her hands, but he could only _just_ feel the softness of her gloves. The burning sun against his scalp intensified. He gave a gasping, desperate cry— _please, please, no…_

“I’m going back,” he said, and Lyra’s face plummeted. He felt her hold on his face tighten.

“No, you can’t!” she said, panicked. “You only just got here! Don’t go, Will, _please_ don’t go! Fight it! Fight!”

“I don’t know what to do; I don’t think I can stop it, Lyra. I have to tell you—listen, I’m in Africa, in Namibia—that’s where the door is, at the conservancy called the Torra Conservancy—and the door is there, but we have to follow the elephants to find it, only we can’t find the elephants yet, but we’re trying and I’m going to find you, I swear, I swear, I swear—”

She pressed her mouth to his. Her kiss was hard and lingering and frenzied. She buried her fingers in his hair and pressed her cheek to his afterwards, gripping him so tightly that his scalped burned from that as well as from the heat of his own world, whispering “ _never, never,”_ under her breath.

But they couldn’t stop it. He could hear the distant sound of his mum’s voice. He didn’t understand, he didn’t know how he’d been able to come again, he didn’t know if he ever would again. He crushed her to him again. His chest felt hollowed out and empty. He thought he might be sick from the pain of it.

“Don’t go,” she said again, but this time it was a whisper. He kissed her lips softly, his hand winding into her hair. He could feel her heartbeat pounding away inside her chest, pressed as close to his as her stomach would allow. “Please, don’t go again, Will.”

“I wish I could stop it,” he said. He had never sounded so broken. His tears were hot and burning—or maybe that was the glare of the sun on his face in his own world. “I’m so sorry, Lyra. I’m so sorry. I’ve let you down. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”

He pressed his face against her hair and struggling to hold his sobs at bay. This wasn’t how he wanted to spend their brief reunion, but the pain of seeing her again—and then losing her all over again—was unbearable.

“Don’t apologize. Just _get here_. Find me,” she said, her voice fierce, yet shaking with emotion.

He felt something cool and wet dripping on his face. He knew it was coming from his own world.

“Will…” Lyra said, and then she reached up and untangled one of his hands from her hair. She brought it down and placed it on her stomach, palm down, his fingers splayed out. Will felt the soft firmness of her stomach, and then—

His tears burst from him, wild as a river, just as untamable. He was blinded by them, but still he was able to lean down and find her lips again. He kissed her as he felt their child’s movements beneath his hand. He was overcome by that deep, protective feeling he’d been experiencing every time he thought of their baby, and as he stood there, feeling it moving around, realizing that maybe this would be the only time he would _ever_ get to experience his own child, he realized that that feeling was love.

“The baby does it all the time now. All the time. It’s so active, Will, and strong—it’s a bit annoying when I’m trying to sleep, actually, and sometimes it hurts ‘cause the baby likes to sort of twist with its limbs stretched out so it slams into all sorts of things inside me—don’t go, Will wait, just a moment,” she begged him.

He had begun to drift. Somehow, she had noticed.

“And Serafina says it’s got one of the strongest kicks she’s ever felt,” she continued, rushing to speak so that her words trampled over one another, desperate to tell him what he was desperate to hear. He hung onto every word and pushed against any sensations from his own world, trying to push it away, trying to delay it. “And it wakes up during the night if I roll over suddenly, or cough, or sneeze—and…and…I can hear its heartbeat with a stethoscope now—that was so clever of you to have one in our bag, there are so many things we’ve needed that I’ve found in the bag, you did such a great job getting things—and my belly button’s popped out and it hate it and it looks hilarious, and Pan can push against where the baby’s kicking and it’ll kick right back, and I wee by accident all the time now and it’s embarrassing and I hate that, too, but I love when the baby flips over, it feels really odd, almost like a fish swimming, and I don’t know what I want to name it yet because I can’t even think about names without having your input—I won’t even let anybody tell me the sex of it yet, either, because I don’t want to know if you don’t know—and—”

He could feel himself drifting once more. He reached down and set both hands on her stomach, trying to focus on the nudging sensations coming from beneath her skin, on the wonderful smell of her hair, on _her_.

“I love you,” he said, interrupting her. “I love you, and if I can’t be there for you—”

“Don’t say that, you will be. My alethiometer said!”

“If I can’t be, just stay calm, and I love you, and it’s going to be okay. Listen. After the baby is born, rub down the sides of its nose with your fingers so the amniotic fluid in its nostrils will come out so it can breathe. Make sure to lay it on your chest and cover both of you with a blanket. Try to nurse the baby as soon as you can because it will stimulate more contractions and keep reduce the risk of you hemorrhaging out. Wait a few minutes to cut the umbilical cord, and to do that, you have to tie it off about five or so centimeter from the baby and then tie off at another spot about two centimeters above that and then sterilize with the brown solution in the first aid kid and use the scissors in there to sever it between the two ties…” what else? What else? His mind was spinning. What else did she need to know? He hoped somebody would be there to help her, but if not, he had to give her the information she’d need to do it alone. “If the baby comes out with the umbilical cord wrapped around its throat, you have to—”

“Wait,” she said, panicked, her face paling with every word he said. “Slow down, you’re going too fast—”

“You need to try and slip it over the baby’s head gently and slowly, and if there’s not enough give for that, try to loosen it enough that—”

He felt a splash of cold water. His vision expanded out and turned desert-red, and then arctic-white, and then desert-red again.

“Will, you’re going to be there, you are,” she sounded far-away. Her voice was trembling.

“But just in case I’m not—”

He was looking up at his mum’s face.

“Just in case what?” she asked, baffled. “Will, are you okay?!”

“Did you faint?” Monica demanded. “Here, drink this…”

She pushed his water bottle at his mouth. He drank a bit. He was shaking so hard his mum had to reach out and take the water bottle from him to keep him from spilling it all over himself.

“We’ve got to get you to hospital,” Mary said, concerned. “You’re going into shock.”

“No,” Will said. He looked at her meaningfully. “I didn’t faint, Mary.”

It took her a second. Her eyes widened. She realized that his shaking was from how upset he was, and she relaxed.

“He’s okay,” she told Monica, her voice softer now.

“No,” Monica argued uneasily. “I think he has heat stroke.”

“No, he’s okay. He has a…medical condition. He’s all right. He just needs a moment to rest and drink some water,” Mary argued.

Will needed more than a moment, but a moment was all they had. He drank as much as he could, his movements robotic, his responses automatic. He was surprised by how distant his emotions felt. He knew when they finally crashed into him that he would be inconsolable, but he had been seized by a need to _do something_ , and it was all he could think about. So he drank nearly all his water bottle, stood carefully, and then started walking again. Monica, Mary, and his mum had no choice but to follow.

* * *

 

Near the end of their hike that day, Monica gave a cry of joy. Will felt himself grow lightheaded as a wave of hope escaped the careful hold he had on his emotions. He looked at their guide, half-expecting to see an elephant, but she was grinning down at something on the dirt. When Will walked over, he saw what it was: elephant dung.

Mary kneeled down beside Monica, acting every bit the role of wildlife biologist.

“It looks fresh,” she said expertly, as if she knew anything about elephants. Will might have felt amused if he was letting himself feel anything at all. “They’ve been here.”

“Yes,” Monica said happily.

“Will they come back to the same spot tomorrow?” Will’s mum asked.

“Not sure. But at least we know the direction they were headed in. That’s better than what we knew yesterday,” said Monica. She stood and glanced at her watch. “Let us go back. I have to work soon.”

Will blazed the way again, each step coming without consideration or input from his mind.

“I feel bad that you’ve been out here in the sun walking all this time and now you have to work,” Will’s mum murmured to Monica. They were a step or two behind him. “You don’t _have_ to help us, you know.”

Monica laughed. “Oh, I know,” she reassured her. There was a brief pause, and then she said: “My intentions aren’t _entirely_ selfless. If I can figure out where the elephants are running off to, we can get more business, and I’ll get promoted. I want to be a game guard.”

“Then finding these elephants works in everyone's favor,” Mary said, pleased.

“Most of all his, I think,” Will heard Monica whisper. He could sense her gaze on his back. “I think he wants them most of all, though I’m not sure why.”

“It’s complicated,” Mary evaded. “But yes. I think so, too.”

“And you promise this is all strictly educational? You’re not…hunters, or poachers, or…?”

“Absolutely not,” Mary assured her, the horror in her tone genuine enough to convince Monica. “We mean them no harm. That I can promise you.”

They made it back to camp in half the time it took to make it out to the point they’d stopped at. Will thanked Monica in a dead sort of voice, and then he turned and headed into the cabin before Mary or his mum could ask him anything at all. He crawled under the covers; Kirjava joined him.

“Will?” he heard Mary ask softly. The door squeaked as it shut behind her.

“Leave him,” his mum whispered gently, for he had begun to cry.

* * *

 

“I like Aobel,” said Aobel. She continued rolling her ball of colored ice around on the sea ice. “It’s nice, see? _Aobel, Aobel_. Only don’t yell it ‘cause it doesn’t sound nice in a mean voice.”

Lyra turned the page of the baby name book and looked up. She smiled at Aobel.

“That’s _your_ name. I can’t give the baby _your_ name.”

“That’s okay. I can share.”

Aobel suddenly darted to sit behind Lyra as Iorek splashed up out of the sea. She was here spying on her dad and clearly didn’t want to be caught. Lyra was fine with covering her. Lyra waved cheerful at Iorek; he waved a paw back and gave her a mildly vexed look. She was _really_ supposed to be staying off the ice now that she was so close to her due date, but she liked it by the sea. The brisk air soothed her. It was easier to think. When she was in her warm, comfortable cottage, she mostly just wanted to sleep, but sleep was hard to come by these days.

Pantalaimon circled another name in the book. Lyra hated it, and when Pantalaimon felt her revulsion, he scoffed up at her. 

"It's a great name!" he defended. 

"It's not!" she said hotly. "It sounds like a disease!"

With a huff, Pantalaimon crossed a line aggressively through the name he'd just circled. He chose another one; it was much more agreeable to Lyra, and Pantalaimon liked it better, too. 

“And what if the baby is a boy?” Lyra challenged Aobel, returning to their previous conversation. “Shall I name him Iokem?”

“ _NO!_ ” Aobel cried, affronted by the mere suggestion. “You call it Iorek.”

“Oh, okay. I see.”

“Or maybe you could call it after the dark one.”

“Will,” Lyra corrected, and it was only because Aobel was there—and she didn’t want to upset her—that she was able to keep her voice relatively unaffected. She couldn’t stop her heart from lurching, though. And Pantalaimon had turned to lean against her chest.

“Or the orange one!”

“Malcolm.”

“Yeah, one of them.”

“Hmm…I’ll think on it,” said Lyra, though she was certain she didn’t want to name her baby after anybody. She wanted her baby to have its own identity, and she knew Will would, too. She closed her book, passed it to Pantalaimon, and began the difficult process of standing up. Aobel placed all four paws on the ice, gripped tight with her claws, and stood steady so Lyra could set her hand on her back for balance. Once she’d hefted herself upright, she set off towards her cottage. She smiled a bit as she heard Aobel tagging along close behind.

“Don’t you want to play with your cub friends?” Lyra questioned.

“No, I want to come with you,” Aobel said.

“Where does Maja think you are, anyway? ‘Cause I’m not sure I want to be accused of kidnapping a cub.”

“She thinks I’m hunting.”

Lyra reached down and poked Aobel’s chubby stomach. “And what will you do for dinner, then, if you don’t actually hunt and eat a seal?”

“I’ll eat some people-food.”

“Ah, Aobel,” lamented Lyra. “I don’t think Iorek would approve of me corrupting your true panserbjørn ways with sofas and vegetables.”

“So don’t tell him. What names in your book _did_ you like? I saw Pantalaimon circling loads.”

“They’re a work in progress,” Pan commented vaguely.  

Lyra turned onto the path that’d take them to her cottage. It was uphill, so her pace slowed a bit. She set her hand on her pregnant stomach as she huffed her way up the hill, not even thinking about Aobel’s question until she was certain she’d make it to the top without going into labor. Once she made her victorious arrival at her cottage door, she considered Aobel’s question.

“I dunno. There are a few I sort of like. But it’s difficult to know, ‘cause I haven’t met my baby yet. I think once I do, I’ll know for sure.” Lyra stepped into the warmth of the cottage, Aobel bouncing in behind her. “Hello, Malcolm—Asta,” greeted Lyra.

“I’m back,” Aobel said. She bounded over to the sofa, where Malcolm and Asta were curled up with a book. Like she always did, she misjudged distances within the house and ended up colliding with the sofa, sending it scooting back along the floors. Malcolm’s eyes were wide. He loosened his sudden hold on the arm of the sofa.

“Er, hello, Aobel. I see that.”

Aobel set her face in his lap. “Do you have jam?”

Aobel had taken quite a liking to the assorted jams they’d received in their last food shipment. She’d been quite a sight with her white fur stained deep purple.

“No more jam, I’m afraid,” Malcolm sighed. “Have you been keeping an eye on Lyra?”

“Yes,” said Aobel seriously. “She’s my dad’s friend so I follow her around and I protect her.”

Lyra exchanged a quick, amused look with Malcolm.

“That’s very valiant of you.”

“Mmhmm,” agreed Aobel. “Plus she’s huge and she doesn’t get around so well.”

Lyra’s amused smile turned into a scowl that she shot in the bear’s direction.

“Watch it,” she warned. “I’m your _elder_.”

“You’re not my elder. You’re a she-human,” Aobel said. “Can I see your baby name book now?”

Lyra passed it to Aobel. She couldn’t read yet—clearly—but she seemed to enjoy flipping purposefully through the pages as if looking for something specific. She pretended to read, mumbling random words to herself, while Lyra eased down on the sofa beside Malcolm. The baby took offense to her new position and kicked out, hard enough that Lyra could see a brief bulge from the outside of her stomach.

“I saw that one,” Malcolm said, impressed, his eyes on the brief foot imprint as it kicked out again. “Getting cramped in there, are we?”

“Incredibly so,” Lyra answered for the baby. She set her hands nervously on her stomach. “But it’s not time yet.”

“Getting close to it,” he pointed out. He was right. She was only a couple weeks separated from the end of this. “Nervous? Excited? Both?”

“Right now? Terrified.”

And it was worse considering she probably wouldn’t have felt that frightened at all if Will were with her. But he wasn’t. She was still waiting. And with every day that passed, she worried more and more that her alethiometer had been wrong, that he wouldn’t be here when the child was born, that she’d have to do it alone. Serafina spent more and more time on Svalbard now that the end was drawing near, but she still got called back to Lake Enara from time to time, and Lyra was worried the baby would come when Serafina—and the other witches—were gone.

Still—she tried to stay positive. It was a difficult thing to do, but she knew she had to do it. She couldn’t risk falling despondent now when her strength mattered the most. So she kept telling herself on repeat: _my alethiometer has never been wrong. My alethiometer_ can’t _be wrong. Will will be here, and when he is, everything will be wonderful._

* * *

 

Within the past few weeks, Will had become an unofficial doctor of sorts at the camp.

When the staff found out that their seemingly permanent resident was a doctor, they’d been quick to ask him if he’d ever volunteer if someone were to need medical assistance. And, of course, he said he would: the closest hospital was a good ways away and there were many things that could cause one harm in the desert. He soon found solace in tending to the minor illnesses and injuries of the people around him; it was the only thing that he could get himself to stand still for. When he wasn’t forcing himself to sleep or playing camp doctor, he was braving the wilds around himself in his relentless quest for the elephants.

They had spotted a few a couple of times by now, once even a family of them. But both times they’d been unable to follow the elephants; their truck was incapable of venturing after them on the uneven terrain, and they couldn’t keep up with the elephants on foot when the elephants knew they were being pursued.

Will’s only comfort was that all the elephants they’d seen seemed to be headed in the same direction. So he’d started hiking further and further out in that direction, mapping and sketching the land in his notebook as he discovered it, crossing off areas he’d ruled out as the possible home of the door between his and Lyra’s worlds. It was difficult, neverending work. Sometimes, in his lowest moments, he was convinced it was impossible, that he could scale the land day after day and still never live long enough to see it all. But it was all he knew to do.

And when he finally found them—the elephants—it happened when he least expected it. He hadn’t even been looking. He, Mary, and his mum were sitting on their cabin porch having coffee. And there they were.

“Will,” Mary had said, her voice tight and urgent. Will had felt his heart begin to pound before he even saw them standing still just outside the firepit. A mother and a calf. They were perhaps a tad smaller than the elephants Will had seen in zoos, but otherwise looked very similar, and Will thought he was dreaming for a long second. Then his mum stood slowly.

“Wait,” Mary said, reaching her hand out to grab his mum’s arm. “You’ll scare them.”

“No,” his mum whispered, certain. “They know we’re here. We can follow them.”

Will wasn’t certain at all, but he listened to his mum, and soon the three were walking slowly and carefully towards the elephant and its baby. The mother elephant made a funny huffing noise from her trunk as they approached, and for a moment, Will was certain she’d turn and run like the others he’d seen had done. But she didn’t. She waited and watched, and as soon as they were close enough to make out the mud caked in the wrinkles of her hide, she turned and began walking off in a steady pace, the calf close behind.

They hadn’t even had to look each other to question it. They followed.

* * *

 

On and on they walked, for what felt like hours. Will walked far past the point of exhaustion. After a certain point, he, his mum, and Mary were silent, each trembling from fatigue and moving seemingly on autopilot. The elephants didn’t stop to eat or drink, so neither did Will, Mary, and his mum.

He was so tired that his feet seemed to glide over the earth. So when he saw a familiar glimmer hanging midair, he wasn’t even sure if he was conscious.

“ _Oh!_ ” Mary said, stunned. But it wasn’t the door between his world and Lyra’s that she was marveling at. It was the elephants. She walked up to them slowly, cautiously. She hesitantly set a shaking hand on the mother’s trunk. “You were leading us here, weren’t you?”

The elephant reached up with its trunk and wrapped it gently around Mary’s hand. Mary beamed, delighted.

“Oh, you remind me of someone I care about very much,” she said, and Will knew she was thinking about the mulefa.

“I don’t understand,” Will heard his mum say. He glanced tiredly over at her. She was looking all around them, confused. “Have we found it?”

He had to remind himself that not everybody was as well acquainted with doors between worlds as he was.

“Here, Mum. Just here,” he said, gesturing towards the barely-visible gap.

It took his mum a minute or so to see it. When she did, she was intrigued. She walked up to it and peered through.

“And that’s…?”

“Yes,” Will said, confident. “That’s Lyra’s world.”

As soon as the words left him, his exhaustion seemed to evaporate. It was like a splash of cold water to his senses. _Lyra’s world. Lyra._

Before he could spare a moment to thank the elephant, Kirjava jumped up and through the door, but not before sending a surge of impatience Will’s way. Will’s mum cried out as soon as she disappeared.

“Kirjava!” she said, and then she looked wildly at Will to gauge his response. He was calm. He could sense that this door was stable like he could sense fever by touch. He would get through the door, and Kirjava would be on the other side, and unless someone purposefully sought this door out to close it, it would remain part of the natural workings of the universe.

“It’s fine, Mum,” he reassured her. “She’s just on the other side. Think of it like a door or window. I’ll go next,” he said. But before he did, he walked up to stand beside Mary. He reached out and set his left hand on the elephant’s side. “I don’t know why, or how, but _thank you_.”

He thought about the elephant symbol Lyra’s alethiometer had kept giving her. He couldn’t wait to tell her what it had _really_ meant. He couldn’t wait to see her, to be there with her, to be a proper partner and a proper _father_. He felt himself grin. And so, without wanting to spend another moment missing and longing for Lyra, he stepped in and through the door to Lyra’s world after Kirjava, his mum and Mary close behind.

* * *

 

Lyra was certain that Serafina was keeping something from her.

She seemed preoccupied with something lately; she often walked off to speak to other witches so she was out of Lyra’s earshot, and when she came back, she fielded any questions Lyra sent her way.

Lyra didn’t expect to know everything. She didn’t expect to be kept in the loop about Lake Enara politics. But she had the overwhelming feeling that this secret was about _her_ , and when she asked the alethiometer, it confirmed as much. And that left far too much room for panic.

“It’s about the baby, isn’t it?” she finally demanded. Her voice sounded surprisingly steady given how fast her heart was plummeting. “What you’re hiding from me. It’s about the baby.”

Serafina looked up from the concoction brewing in front of her (some sort of herbal tea to promote ‘painless entry into the world and maternal peace’, though Lyra had an intense suspicion that it was just chamomile.) Lyra’s back had been hurting for two days now. Serafina thought it was a sign that the baby would come soon, but Lyra hoped it was just from overextending herself.

“It’s not, actually,” she told her. Her voice was casual, but Lyra could sense tension beneath.

“Will?” she demanded, her voice taut with dread.

“No. It’s about the Church.”

She glanced quickly at Lyra. Lyra didn’t react with much more than a blink.

“About their alethiometrist finally working out that I’m on Svalbard? It’s embarrassing how inept he is…it took him _ages_ …” she let herself laugh nastily at the other alethiometrist’s expense.

Serafina set down the tiny stone spoon she’d been stirring with. Steam wafted up from the mug and distorted her face a bit. She looked grave.

“I don’t understand your reaction,” she admitted.

Lyra shrugged. “My alethiometer told me they decided not to come onto Svalbard, on account of the panserbjørne. They don’t like their odds.”

It made Lyra feel quite smug to think of the Church cowering in fear at the idea of her dear Iorek.

“Yes,” Serafina agreed. She gingerly picked up the wide, stone mug and began blowing on the surface. “But did it tell you their long-term plans?”

Lyra felt jarred by that question. Her alethiometer hadn’t told her there was another plan, just that the Church had decided not to storm Svalbard shores. “Well, no, but…”

“The Church is thinking you’ll leave Svalbard once the baby is born. They’ve got eyes on the oceans and the skies. And in the event that you decide _not_ to leave, they’re prepared to amass an army big enough to take on the panserbjørne.”

It took a moment or two for the full implications of that information to sink in. Lyra leaned back slowly, her eyes moving to peer out the window. It was quiet then except for the low tapping sound of the stone spoon and mug hitting each other as Serafina stirred. Lyra set a hand on her stomach automatically as the baby twisted inside her; she could tell it was uncomfortable…it was so big now, and any day it would be here…and Will _wasn’t_ …and how was he meant to get to her with the Church watching the oceans and the skies? How could she get to him if something went wrong and she had to meet him halfway? How could she keep her baby safe if she were trapped here?

Lyra moved her eyes from the frigid landscape. She sought Serafina’s face.

“I can’t leave, and if I don’t leave, they’ll come to me,” she summarized.

Serafina nodded once. She handed the tea to Lyra. Lyra accepted it automatically, though she didn’t drink it.

“So what am I to do?” Lyra finally asked, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“The question is what are _we_ to do,” corrected Serafina gently. “And I assume you already know the answer.”

Lyra looked down at Pantalaimon. He was quiet, worried, and as they thought the same anxious thoughts, he slid down into what was left of her lap and leaned fully against her stomach. Lyra’s throat felt tight.

“Fight,” said Lyra.

“Yes. But don’t fret just yet. We have advantages on our side. More than they do. And I think that _now_ might be the right time for your story to go out into the world, Lyra.”

Pan didn’t agree. “Now? Right when the Church is considering rallying forces against us? What if they use it as evidence as to why we should be taken down?”

“They probably will. But let the public make their choices with the _full_ story at their disposal—the Church’s _and_ Lyra’s. People might surprise you, Pantalaimon. They always do me,” Serafina admitted.

Lyra shut her eyes briefly. The pain in her lower back was worse, and for a moment, it dominated her thoughts. She had to pack it up tight and shove it away in order to focus on what she had to focus on now. Iorek’s words from ages ago rang in her head. _You must be strong now_. He was right. He was always right.

“So I’ll have Malcolm send my book off to his Oakley Street contacts. He said they can get it distributed anonymously, so the publisher won’t get in trouble. And maybe that will help. And if not, we’ll fight. But Serafina, before any of that, we have to find a way to get Will here to Svalbard. You said they’re watching the sky _and_ the ocean? He’s going to get to my world, I just know it, but when he _does_ he’ll have quite a long way to travel to actually get _here-here,_ to Svalbard, and that’s the most important thing…the _most important thing_. I need him here. I do, Serafina, I _need_ him.”

She was honest in her emotions. She hoped Serafina believed her. This wasn’t something that she wanted; this wasn’t a luxury she preferred to have. This was something she _needed._ She felt that she couldn’t do it without him. Because if he didn’t show up…not only would she be without him (which was unbearable), but it would mean her alethiometer wasn’t always right, and that was the worst possible thing she could imagine. If he didn’t show up, and her alethiometer had lied to her or was otherwise broken—or maybe her ability to read it was broken—she wasn’t sure she could cope with that. She needed something to believe in, something to rely on. The step she was about to take was too huge to leap it blindly. She couldn’t do it without Will, without the alethiometer, without Jordan.

“I know that you do,” Serafina said softly. She reached up and she brushed her fingers through Lyra’s hair gently. “And so we will get him here. Oakley Street has agents working in the Church. We’ll figure it out, we’ll smuggle him through…we’ve already got people waiting at the Torra Conservancy here in your world, Lyra, and they have been for weeks now. As soon as he’s through—as soon as he’s in our world—we’re going to get him to you.”

Her eyes burned. She didn’t know if it was from the discomfort in her back or from the situation. “You promise me?”

“I _promise_. I make an oath to you.”

Another promise, another cautious step. What would she do if the floor came out from beneath her?

* * *

 

He had only just stepped through when he felt something push feebly against him. He teetered, off balance, and landed hard on the ground of Lyra’s world, the breath knocked from him. He rebounded quickly and jumped up, fists clenched, eyes searching for his target—and then he stopped. The breath left him again, but from shock this time. The unfamiliar angel observed Will with cautious eyes.

“William Parry,” it said, and the way it said his name told Will he’d been waiting ages for him. “You will only be permitted to use this door if you make me a promise. An oath. One you may never turn your back on—one you must always honor.”

Will was wary. “What are you talking about? What do you want?” He saw a flash as his mum tried to step through. The angel shoved back, and his mum, not knowing anything about stepping through worlds, jumped back into their own world, clearly assuming the tension was a wall of some sort. Will balled his fists up again. “Let her through!”

“Not until you promise me.”

Will sized him up. His blood was pounding with rage. He didn’t have time to deal with this; he needed to get on his way, he didn’t have _time_ , and hadn’t Mary’s machine told him he shouldn’t waste it?

“Yeah? Or what? You’re an angel; I know how weak you are physically. You want to fight? Fine. Let’s go. I don’t have time for this.”

“Oh, I’m not going to fight you,” the angel assured him. “I’m going to close this door.”

Will froze.

“See,” the angel continued. “I was taught how to do it by Xaphania. And if you don’t promise me what I ask of you, I will shut this door right now. I’ll shut your mother out. I’ll shut Mary Malone out. I’ll shut you _in_. And you can die here in ten years. You’ll never see your mother again. You’ll never see your child grow up. You can die just like your father did and leave your child just like your father left you—”

“Don’t!” Will cried, for the angel had begun searching the air with his fingers in a way terrifyingly familiar to Will. “Don’t close it!”

“You’ll listen?”

“I’ll listen. Don’t close it.”

The angel lowered his hand, but he didn’t step away from the window.

“You’re going to have a daughter in two days’ time,” he said, and Will felt his heart begin to race at once. Two days? (A daughter?) He was far too shocked to respond, but he felt a smile steal over his expression. “She will be healthy. And you will love her more than you’ve ever loved anything, as all parents do.”

Will didn’t understand. “And what does this have to do with you?”

“Be patient,” the angel snapped. “There is something the child is destined to do. I don’t know what; I only know the outcome of it. That child will somehow be the final destruction of the Church. She will complete the work you and Lyra Silvertongue began.”

Will wanted so terribly to argue. He wanted to say— _no, she’s a baby, she doesn’t have to do_ anything _, and nobody can tell her what she’ll do once she’s older, either—_ but he was too afraid to anger the angel now that he knew he could close that door (and was willing to.)

“What you must promise me is that, when the time comes, you won’t stop her.”

“Stop her? Stop her from doing what?”

“I don’t know. But I do know you. I’ve watched you for decades. There’s a noble, defiant streak in you that knows no blind loyalty to any cause. You will do what you think is right no matter what was decided before. And I’m asking you to promise that if a day comes when your child has to do something—and you want to fight it—that you won’t.”

“So you want me to promise that I’ll say yes to everything my child ever asks of me?”

“Of course not. Don’t argue semantics. You know very well what I’m asking you. There will come a day that your child will have to do something, and every part of you will rebel against it, and it will have something to do with the Church. You must say yes.”

Will hated this. He hated _him_. He felt the emotion with so much clarity that he knew the angel could feel it, too. “And if I don’t?”

“Ah,” the angel said, and then he frowned. “Then I must stand by my word and close this door. You will stay trapped in this world and fall ill, and your daughter and her mother will watch you die. I don’t think they’ll ever recover from the pain of it. I should hate to do that. I care for you and Lyra very much.”

“Yeah?” snapped Will. “Funny way of showing it.” He looked off bitterly. He ground his teeth as he weighed his options. And even though it made his heart heavy, he knew what he had to do. “So those are my choices? Close myself off from my world and die or offer my daughter—the child I’ve yet to even _hold yet_ —up for slaughter?”

“You misunderstand. I’m not asking you to slaughter anybody.”

“Now who is arguing semantics?” Will spat. He was so angry his hands were shaking now, and his eyes burned. “You’re asking me to—to…disregard every instinct I have—instincts that are surely going to be to _protect her_ —so that my daughter can be used for _your_ agenda—”

“It is not only my agenda. It’s yours. It’s everyone’s. It’s your _child’s_. She will be hunted her entire life. The destruction of the Church is her only shot at salvation.”

“And can you promise _me_ that this ‘thing’ she’s going to end up doing won’t end up killing her?”

“Of course I can’t. And that’s not because I don’t want to tell you the truth: it’s because I simply do not know.”

“Yeah, well, then my answer is simple,” said Will, his face throbbing now from the pounding of the blood through his veins. “You can shut the door. I’ll take my ten years and I’ll make the best of them. I won’t sacrifice my child. I won’t.”

The angel looked surprised for a brief moment. And then he smiled again, a taunting grin that made Will visibly grimace.

“Sure. And then your child will really be free to fulfil her destiny because you won’t be there. Not only will you be unable to stop her, you’ll be unable to help her. You’ll be dead. Gone. She’ll be abandoned. Which is just as well for my purposes—this task of hers won’t start until later in her life, anyway, so you dying gets you out of the way—but, as I said before, I don’t _want_ to cause any misery.”

Will couldn’t accept that he’d been cornered. He shook his head. “No. Lyra would protect her. Lyra wouldn’t let her go off and do this—whatever it is.”

“Maybe,” agreed the angel. “Or maybe not. Maybe Lyra will see sense in it, whatever it is. Or maybe your child will go off and do it anyway. Maybe you’ll just be abandoning Lyra to handle it all on her own.”

His eyes burned at those words. The angel had somehow known his worst fear—not being there for Lyra, letting her down, not being able to protect her—and he was _hurting him_. Will stood there and felt genuine tears of pain prick his eyes. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t agree to something without knowing more about it. But he couldn’t stand here and argue for ages, either. Lyra would have their baby in _two days_. He had two days to get to her. Two days was nothing. Two days was no time at all.

So maybe it was time to try his hand at lying.

“Fine,” Will said, and on instinct, he let a few tears slip past his control. They slid down his face, fat, bulbous tears. “Fine. I promise. Whatever she must do…I’ll help her. I won’t say I’ll let her go off and do it alone—because I _won’t_!—but whatever it is…I’ll help her do it. I’ll help keep her safe. That’s okay, right? That can be our compromise. I won’t interfere, but I _will_ be part of it. Please.”

The angel watched Will silently for at least a full minute. Will let himself continue to cry, and he kept his mind determinedly blank. Finally, after what felt like ages, the angel nodded.

“Then we have a deal. I will stay here and continue guarding this door. No one will shut it; it will be here for you and your family to use as often as you please. But if you break your promise to me, I will close it that same day, and that will be it. Do we understand each other?”

Will nodded. “We do,” he said. “Now can you please move and let my mother through?”

The angel stepped to the side. Will hurried forward and helped his mother step through the door. She looked surprised when she finally had both feet solidly on the ground.

“But it looks just the same,” she said, baffled. “I thought Lyra’s world was different.”

“Just wait,” Will said sourly. “It’s not just the same.”

Will waited as Mary stepped through. His mum caught sight of the angel from the corner of her eye and jumped.

“Oh!” she cried, alarmed.

Will had forgotten how odd all of this was until he considered it from his mother’s point of view.

“Mum, it’s an angel. I’ll explain later,” he said. He looked around. Kirjava was nowhere to be seen, but he wasn’t worried. He assumed she was scoping the area before they ventured too far out. He glanced back at the angel. “Do you know which way my dæmon went?”

The angel pointed north. “That way. With a woman. A witch.”

Mary stepped over quickly, her face brightening. “Serafina Pekkala?”

“No, but a member of her clan. She has been around waiting for your arrival for weeks.”

Will grinned. His mum followed their exchange uncertainly, still generously shaken by the angel’s appearance, but she smiled a bit when Will smiled.

“Let’s go,” Mary said eagerly.

“Hang on,” muttered Will, and then he turned back to face the angel once more. “I have a question.”

“I’m sure you have many questions,” the angel corrected. “You will see me every time you come to this door, which will be often. Choose one for now and go. Your time is precious.”

Will agreed with that. He considered what he wanted to know the most, and then he asked: “Was it you? Did you hide or protect this door all along? Did you give me the ability to go to Lyra—to be physical? And was it because you wanted us to conceive our daughter?”

“That’s more than one question.”

“Then answer them quickly.”

“Yes, I was the one who put you two back together again. Yes, your daughter was crucial to the future.”

“That wasn’t all my questions.”

“It actually was. Now go—go. Two days, don’t forget. Only two.”

He hadn’t forgotten. Mary and his mum looked at him quizzically, but he shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it in front of the angel.

He wasn’t sure whether to thank the angel or threaten him before they departed. He settled on waving once.

“Do not forget your promise,” the angel warned.

“I won’t,” Will swore, and that was true at least. He wasn’t likely to forget anything they’d talked about.

Will and his mum followed after Mary as she blazed ahead in the direction Kirjava had gone.  

* * *

Lyra wasn’t feeling well at all.

She woke in the middle of the night to back pain much worse than any she’d dealt with thus far. Pantalaimon whimpered against her throat.

“Maybe we pulled something,” Lyra said to Pan, but instinctively, she knew it wasn’t that sort of pain at all.

She readjusted the pillow wedged beneath her stomach and stroked Pan’s fur, trying her hardest to bear it and drift back off. And she did, for a few minutes or so, but then the pain was back, and she was starting to become frightened. What if it was labor? She had no idea what labor felt like; she’d never experienced it before. What if it was and she gave birth alone right here?

“Let’s go to Malcolm and Asta,” Pantalaimon urged, his voice drawn with pain. “Just so we’re not alone in here.”

“Okay,” agreed Lyra. “But I’m going to make a warm compress first.”

Pantalaimon carried her alethiometer—it went everywhere with her now like a security blanket of sorts—while Lyra pulled herself from the bed. She and Pan went into the kitchen. She put the kettle on, heated some water just a bit, and then poured it over the compress she’d been using often.  She wrung it out—her cold hands tingled at the change in temperature—and then she followed Pantalaimon to Malcolm’s room. He’d been leaving the door cracked these past few nights as if he feared this would happen. Pan darted into the dark room first while Lyra waited outside, pressing the hot compress over her dressing gown, indifferent to the wetness. She just wanted some relief. She didn’t want it to feel the way it had when she woke ever again.

Asta appeared in the doorway this time, Pantalaimon right behind her.

“Come on,” she murmured, concerned. Lyra followed her in.

“I just don’t want to be alone; I didn’t want to wake you—”

“You don’t have to explain,” Asta said. She sounded more maternal when she spoke—firm, loving, strong—than Lyra had ever heard. “Come on.”

When Lyra stepped in, Malcolm was stirring. Lyra knew Pantalaimon had just woken Asta, but often times, when one’s dæmon was awake, one woke naturally with them. He sat up as soon as he sensed Lyra and Pan’s presence.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.

“Nothing,” said Lyra, and then she had to sit on the edge of the bed because she felt the pain return. She pressed the compress back to her back. Pantalaimon leaned against Asta. “Can I stay in here? I just don’t want to be alone.”

“Of course,” he said at once. “Shall I call for Serafina?”

“Not yet, but maybe,” she answered. She reclined back across the end of the bed and turned carefully onto her side. She wedged her arm under her stomach for lack of a pillow, but a second later, Malcolm tossed one down to her. It smacked her in the face.

“Bad aim, sorry,” he said, chagrined, but Lyra had to laugh. He chuckled along with her.

“Next time just let Asta bring it down,” she said. She grabbed the pillow and tucked it beneath her stomach. It sort of bothered her that she hadn’t felt the baby kick or twist or do anything since she’d woken, but she was too afraid to say that aloud. Instead, she and Pan thought it together, and then he handed her the alethiometer. She rushed to frame the question, knowing that if her back hurt again like she had when she woke that she wouldn’t be able to ask the alethiometer _anything_ , and she was able to get a response quickly enough. Yes, the baby was fine. It just didn’t have much room to move at all anymore.

Reassured that the baby was okay, and determined to pretend nothing out of the ordinary was happening at all, she had Pantalaimon curl up against the compress to hold it in place, and then she told Malcolm to go back to sleep.

“There’s no use in both of us staying up. It’s probably just back pain from how heavy my stomach is, that’s all…thanks for letting me come in here.”

“Just wake me if you need something,” he said. He still sounded worried.

“Okay, I will, I promise.”

Neither of them slept much. He dozed quietly on and off, but every time Lyra inhaled sharply or Pantalaimon whimpered, he jumped like he’d been kicked. And when the pain hit again like it had when she woke the first time—intense, cramping, very different than anything Lyra had felt before—she sort of knew what was happening. But she didn’t want to frighten him.

“Maybe you could get Serafina now,” Lyra suggested, working hard to keep her voice casual.

Malcolm shot out of the bed like he’d just been waiting for her to say it. “I’ll be back.”

She’d been handling it rather well she thought, but as soon as she and Pantalaimon were alone, panic overtook her chest. She found breathing fully difficult, and that made the pain worse, and soon the pain wasn’t only in her back: it was traveling over her stomach, too. Lyra gripped it, curious to see if pressure would help, and when she did, she was shocked to feel her stomach stretched taunt beneath her skin, almost like a drum. It didn’t feel normal. But after the pain passed, it didn’t feel like that anymore.

“Definitely a contraction,” Lyra decided confidently. “I read all about this in Will’s baby birthing book.”

Pantalaimon was worse off than she was. He was breathing heavily. “Oh no, oh no, oh no—they left, they have to go all the way to the house Serafina’s in, they might not make it back in time—I don’t know what to do—oh no, oh no….”

His panic fed Lyra’s. It was only making the pain worse, and upsetting her, so she tried to talk sense into him.

“They’ll be back, hush,” she snapped. “You’re not helping. Go keep watch at the door. Go on.”

“And leave you in here alone?!” he seemed horrified and heartbroken by the idea. Deep down, Lyra was too, but she had to be strong like Iorek said, and Pan’s panic was only worsening her state of mind.

“Yeah, I need you to keep watch. Go. And anyway, you’re making me _more_ scared, and I’m scared enough as it is.”

“Maybe I’m just feeling _your_ fear!”

“Doesn’t matter—I don’t need it doubled and sent back to me!”

Sending him away felt wrong, but the pain—both emotional and physical—was so much that she felt this overwhelming urge to _stop it_. She felt she was willing to do anything for even a slight reprieve. But the pain soon returned despite her efforts, and Lyra could hardly think about anything else. She doubled over with her arms around her stomach and suffered alone, while Pantalaimon whimpered and suffered alone in the other room, and it didn’t take long for her to realize that she felt just as panicked now as she’d felt before. It wasn’t Pan’s fault at all.

“Pan…” she called, her voice twisted with pain and guilt.

He was flying across the room in a moment. He jumped onto the bed and scurried up over her stomach. Lyra held him over her heart and pressed her face against his fur. It was then that she felt the tears burning her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said thickly. “It’s not your fault. You’re hurting, too.”

He nuzzled the curve of her neck in response. Lyra understood. He wasn’t angry with her.

She held him close and they breathed together through each wave of pain. By the time Serafina returned with Malcolm and Iorek, Lyra was pallid and sweaty, and Pantalaimon was nothing more than a tight ball of pain at her side.

Serafina set her hand once on Lyra’s stomach.

“Yes. Those are contractions. Iorek, will you go guard the door? I don’t want anybody coming in for any reason. Malcolm, get the supply bag from the sitting room. Lyra, can you turn over onto your back?”

For once in her life, Lyra was eager to follow directions. Serafina seemed confident and calm, and Lyra desperately believed in her (and she needed something to believe in.) She listened to everything Serafina said. She didn’t question anything she asked of her. And when Serafina told her that things were only just beginning, that she’d probably have hours and hours yet until she was ready to actually have the baby, she wasn’t sure whether she was glad or frustrated. She couldn’t have this baby without Will…but at the same time, she wanted all of this to be over with.

“My alethiometer said that Will would be here when the baby is born,” Lyra told Serafina.

Serafina didn’t argue with Lyra, but Lyra did see her shoot a skeptical and worried look Malcolm’s way. It made her feel sick.

What if he didn’t show up?

What if her alethiometer was wrong?

She didn’t know what was worse: her fear or the pain.

* * *

 

The first thing Will told the witch when they finally caught up with her and Kirjava was that he had two days to get to Lyra. She took it seriously. Within fifteen minutes of their introductions—her name was Polymnia; she was a young witch Will and Mary had never met before—she had them on board a worryingly unfamiliar aircraft called a zeppelin.

“We’ve been waiting,” Polymnia whispered to Will, as soon as they’d buckled their belts. “We’ve got a plan to get you there—to Lyra. We had hoped we’d have more time than two days…but we’ll do our best. Oh, it’s going to be _odd_ flying this way…”

“Are we flying all the way to Svalbard?” Will asked. He hoped so. He was certain it couldn’t take more than one full day…assuming these zeppelins went as quickly as airplanes did.

“No. We’ll have to stop at the aërodock in Hammerfest. From there, we continue our journey by boat.”

Will felt sick. “Is it going to be possible to make it there in two days?”

“It will be difficult. Everything will have to go smoothly. We won’t be able to stop and rest, not even for a moment. But our flight should be around twenty hours or so, and then we may be able to make it from Hammerfest to Svalbard in time. It depends what boat the Gyptians will have waiting for us. Some go quicker than others.”

Will, Mary, and his mum were so exhausted from their nonstop walking in their own world that they quickly fell asleep despite the strange movement of the zeppelin. Even Will, who was so stressed he was certain he’d never be able to sleep, nodded off surprisingly quickly. Kirjava slept curled in his lap the entire trip.

* * *

 

The boat turned out to be a lean-looking motorboat with crates and crates of goods loaded on the deck. Will was disoriented from waking during the zeppelin’s rocky landing and hardly had time to notice much before he was stowed beneath the ship. He later found out that it had been waiting at port for weeks for his arrival. And despite how much nicer this boat was to Malcolm’s sailboat, Will despised the idea of getting on another boat. But he knew he had little choice, and he would do anything to get to Lyra, so he, his mum, and Mary squeezed down in what oddly resembled a root cellar beneath the main cabin of a boat. Will felt his stomach jolt as the boat took off; he was knocked backwards a bit from the force of the engine. He had been doubting this boat could actually get them to Svalbard in a day, but those doubts quickly left him right as the motion-sickness from the intense speed took over.

“Great,” Kirjava muttered sarcastically, and then she groaned. “Another damn boat.”

Will’s mum went pale; Kirjava had been careful to stay silent in front of his mum for decades, but she must’ve suddenly decided that she could handle it—or else she was feeling so irritable and ill that she didn’t notice.

“She _talks_?” his mum breathed, baffled. “Has she always been able to do that?!”

Will reached out and patted her hand. “There’s a lot more I should probably tell you, Mum,” he decided.

Kirjava drifted off to sleep—later he found out that the compartment they were hiding in was lined with cedarwood, which caused mild sedation of dæmons—while Will spent a good few hours telling his mum all the little parts he’d left out of his story. He was past the point of worrying it’d send her over the brink. She had been so coherent, so _herself_ , that he knew she could handle it now. And he was right.

“And my dæmon that Mary taught me how to see…it talks, too?” she wondered.

Will wasn’t really sure. Kirjava, having been ripped out of him, was as physical as Pantalaimon was, but Mary’s dæmon and his mother’s were different. He still didn’t know how to see them. He looked to Mary to answer.

“Mine can talk to me, but only I can hear it, and it took years of practice,” she said. “First you have to be able to hold it in your sight for days at a time. Then it becomes solid enough to you to speak and show its own personality.”

His mum looked uneasy. “This sounds like something Dr. Hughes would say is a ‘slippery slope’.”

“I understand why you would think that. But I can promise you this is real. Look at Kirjava. Look at all the Gyptians’ dæmons. This is real, Elaine. You saw your own dæmon…you know in your heart that it was real.”

And so the time trickled by. Mary and his mum spent a long while practicing ‘seeing’ their dæmons. Kirjava slept. Will nodded off but never slept for more than a couple minutes at a time. They were brought food by a kind woman near Mary’s age, and every couple hours they took turns leaving the hiding place to use the toilets. Finally, when Will was certain they _must_ be getting close, somebody else wedged themselves into the compartment. Will recognized him at once. It didn’t matter the time that had passed or the age weighing on his features.

“Farder Coram!” he said, pleased. He had had a few discussions with him when the Gyptians had taken him and Lyra back to Cittàgazze, before they had had to part for what they thought was forever, and he had fond—if vague—memories of both Farder Coram and the Gyptian king, Lord Faa. He remembered them as clever, respectable men, though at the time, his attention had rarely strayed far from Lyra. Now was a similar case. He was here, on a boat with Farder Coram, and all he could think of was her.

“Will,” greeted Farder Coram warmly. He was limping a bit as he and his beautiful, if not age-worn, dæmon made their way across the tiny space to greet Will. The two men shook hands. Will was pleased to find Farder Coram’s handshake as steady and firm as ever. It was nice to see something time hadn’t touched. “We are approaching Svalbard. The Church has agents watching every port; we are going to try to approach from the south, between a small island and the mainland. If we aren’t seen, we’ll head on foot the rest of the way. If we are, Lord Faa is on board, prepared to negotiate.”

Will digested that information. “The Church knows where Lyra is?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say that they do. But right now, they are too few in number and too feeble in strength to take on the panserbjørne and the witches. They believe they have Lyra cornered. They are prepared to ambush her as soon as she attempts to leave Svalbard.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Mary asked, her voice folded over with exhaustion. Will hadn’t realized she was awake; she had drifted off an hour or so prior. “Hello, Farder Coram.”

“Hello again, Mary,” he greeted happily. “If Lyra doesn’t leave Svalbard, the Church will gather the strength needed to invade it in search for her.”

Will already had a thousand different worries on his mind. He wasn’t sure he could shoulder anymore.

“And do you think they’ll let Lord Faa dock? Won’t they assume the Gyptians are here to help the panserbjørne fight?” Mary asked.

“Possibly. But we Gyptians have been trading with the panserbjørne since the end of the war. It is well documented. This ship is our typical trading ship, laden with our typical traded goods, and the Church isn’t aware that we know that _they know_ yet. They believe they’ve kept their plans confidential, that Lyra has no idea that they know she’s on Svalbard. But we have a group of spies that have infiltrated the Church. They work for an agency that’s focused on taking down the Church before it regains full control. They are able to keep us in the loop. Not to mention Lyra’s skills with her alethiometer far surpass the Church’s alethiometrist substantially. _And_ we’ve got Dr. Relf.”

Will found it easier than he would have expected to trust Farder Coram. He caught himself feeling reassured by his words.

“Not to mention Lyra’s book,” he continued, and the smile that followed was proud and fatherly. He caught Will’s intrigued look. “Oh, I don’t suppose you know about it, do you?”

Will shook his head. “What book?”

“She spent all her time on Svalbard writing a recollection of all you two went through. She told the public _everything_. All about the Authority, Metatron, the awful things the Church has done…the agency I told you about before has been steadily distributing it over the past couple of weeks. We’ve seen a sharp increase in critical editorials posted publically about the Church as well as the creation of a few ‘free-thinker’ organizations in bigger British towns. The response has been more positive than negative so far. We’re hoping that Lyra will win the public over—and she’s quite good at winning people over; I told Oakley Street not to discount her charismatic power—and that the Church will be _unable_ to strengthen their forces enough to invade Svalbard. Though I’m quite a fan of winning with words rather than weapons, so I might be a bit biased.”

That soothed Will even more. He trusted Lyra entirely, and if _she_ was fighting in this battle, he felt much more confident in their chances.

“And do you know how she is?” Will asked Farder Coram. He could hear his own longing and worry in his tone.

Farder Coram reached out and set a firm hand on Will’s shoulder. “From what I heard last from Serafina, she’s doing well. I haven’t seen her in a while. I was taken ill for a very long while…but I had to come. I had to see her. And the baby! I had to live long enough for that. As soon as I was well enough to move, I made arrangements to be here, and _then_ I heard that you would need safe passage, and Serafina and I decided that would be a job suited for myself and Lord Faa. We’ll get you there, Will.”

Will could only hope that promise meant more than the promise he’d made to the angel.

* * *

Pain had made a home in Lyra’s body. She was certain it would never end.

“You’re not quite there yet,” Serafina told Lyra, and Lyra flatted her legs back to the bed with a groan. “You’re close, but you’re still not fully dilated.”

“Now I know that you’ve been making me drink regular chamomile! That wasn't a potion for painless births at all! Because this is _not_ painless! This has been going on for _days_! So that was just regular tea!”

“It _has_ been a long while,” Malcolm said. He was sitting at her bedside trying to encourage her to eat something, but she was too nauseated to even humor him.

“Yes, it has, but she’s making progress. It’s just _slow_ progress. We’ll worry if she stops making progress entirely. And yes, the tea I’ve been giving you the past few weeks was chamomile, Lyra. But chamomile is a lovely, useful herb.”

“Yeah? Tell that to my cervix,” Lyra snapped under her breath. Only Pantalaimon heard it. He growled lowly against her shoulder in agreement.

“What about some bread? I can toast it. What do you think?” asked Malcolm.

Lyra turned her face away as he held out a slice of bread. Her stomach churned. She was still damp with sweat from her last contraction and trembling; she didn’t know _why_ they thought she’d want to eat anything.

“You’ve got to eat something,” Serafina told her. It almost sounded like a scold. “You haven’t eaten in nearly eight hours. You have to keep your strength up.”

“There’s no point ‘cause I’ll only vomit it right back up,” Lyra said. She felt the beginnings of another contraction. All other thought was wiped from her mind. She leaned over as far as she could and groaned through it, Pantalaimon whimpering softly at her side.

“What about…oh! I know!” Malcolm said, and then the chair he was in scraped against the wooden floors as he and Asta jumped up and hurried from the room. He returned in only a minute or so. Lyra was still panting through the same contraction. They were stronger and longer now, and coming with less time between them on top of it, and she could never have imagined how badly labor would hurt until today. She wouldn’t have had any sort of frame of reference for the level of pain. And for one of the first times in a long time, she felt the oddest yearning for her mother. Her mother had been through this. Her mother knew. Shouldn’t a girl have her mother during something like this? Shouldn’t she?

“Here,” Malcolm said quickly. He pushed out a tin of biscuits. “You loved them when you were a baby! _Loved_ them!”

He watched her hopefully. Lyra waited until the pain ebbed off, and then she reluctantly reached out and grabbed one. She nibbled at it while Asta settled beside Pantalaimon, purring and rubbing her head against his comfortingly.

“Here, water, water’s important, too,” Malcolm added. He pushed a glass at her. She drank more water than she ate biscuit, but she was able to make her way through two and keep them down, and that was at least something.

Right when she was beginning to feel a bit better, the pain started again.

* * *

 

It had taken them twenty hours to get from Hammerfest to the port of Svalbard the sailors called Longyearbyen. They had decided to sail straight for Longyearbyen rather than try to sneak up from the south; it would have taken them another day to hike to where Lyra was, and they didn’t have another day. They had already been traveling for nearly two full days. It would take them at least four hours to get to Lyra from Longyearbyen, but four hours was better than a day.

The problem was that Lord Faa had to convince the Church to allow them to dock. And he had decided the best way to do this was to invite the Church to search the entire vessel.

“Don’t move. Don’t speak,” Farder Coram said, and Will closed his eyes and held his breath.

Above them, the heavy boots of a churchman thudded heavily.

“As you can see,” Lord Faa said, his voice measured, “we have no weapons of any kind on board. You can search the entire thing again if you’d like, on my invitation. We are only here to trade. We will be in and out in a day, just as we promised.”

There was a long pause. Will had to breathe shallowly through his mouth; he couldn’t hold his breath any longer.

"One day.”

“Yes, one day. And you can check everything we unload to bring mainland if you wish.”

“We’ll be checking everything you bring back to the ship as well.”

“Certainly. You’re more than welcome to.”

There was another pause, and then: “All right. Anchor and unload.”

Will could hardly believe their luck. He didn’t dare say a thing until the compartment opened and Lord Faa peeked down. He was grinning.

“That went better than expected. We’ll disguise you three as Gyptians and hike inland. If we can keep a steady pace, we’ll make it there in a couple of hours.”

That invigorated Will like nothing else. He put on the heavy furs, gloves, hat, and boots he was given. His mum and Mary threw on the ones they were given, too. They were lucky they were all dark-haired; they blended in much better than Lyra with her blonde hair would have.

“Here, carry this trunk,” Lord Faa told Will, passing him a crate. It wasn’t too heavy, but it was awkward to hold, and Will’s arms were aching by the time they stepped on the land. He focused on walking steadily and appearing calm so that nobody would suspect he wasn’t truly a Gyptian. His mum and Mary did the same. They were carrying goods, too, in bags and boxes, and despite the half-dozen churchmen watching their progress as they unpacked the ship, nobody approached them or said a word to them.

They loaded the crates, boxes, and bags onto a waiting sledge. There was a team of four men and women who picked up the ropes and began to pull it across the snow. They walked and walked after the sledge for what felt like ages, and while he grew extremely fatigued, he stayed surprisingly comfortable temperature-wise. Will finally understood Lyra’s faith in ‘furs’.

* * *

 

The sun was setting and Will was shaking with exhaustion by the time they saw dens begin to rise up from the snow. They were getting close to the main settlement. By now, Will’s mum was leaning tiredly against him, hardly able to keep going, and Mary seemed just as tired, though she was staunchly refusing assistance from anyone who offered. 

“Almost there,” Farder Coram said weakly. He’d had to sit on the sledge after an hour of walking, but he was so frail and light that the group pulling it hardly seemed to notice his weight.  Will wished he had stayed behind. He was worried about him.

“I’m going to go ahead,” Will decided. “Farder Coram, is that it?”

He pointed eastward towards the hazy outline of a cottage, the windows glowing warm and yellow in the distance.

“Yes,” Farder Coram answered.

Will looked down at his mum. “Mum, I’m going to run ahead. Are you okay? Can you make it the rest of the way?”

She nodded tiredly. “Yes, just needed a rest, I’m okay now.”

Will looked at Mary. Mary nodded once as if to say _I’ll take care of her._ Will mouthed _thank you_ and then set off after Kirjava in a jog. He went as fast as he possibly could, the icy air ripping down his throat as he panted, his legs trembling with every step. Her cottage seemed impossibly far. He didn’t know how long it would take him to get there; maybe it was already too late. But he couldn’t give up. He was so close now…he had traveled so far and now he was close enough that he could see the place she was. He would be able to hold her in his arms— _really hold her_ —for the first time since they were twelve.

And his daughter.

He would get to hold her, too.

He pushed himself to run a bit faster.

* * *

 

“Okay, good, you’re doing well,” Serafina praised. Lyra fell back against the pillows. She could hear her own heartbeat racing in her ears; she could feel the throb of blood in her temples. Serafina patted her calf gently, murmuring something to Kaisa that Lyra couldn’t hear. Malcolm moved a damp cloth back onto her forehead, and Lyra wasn’t really sure _why_ he kept placing it there—it wasn’t like she had a headache—but she was too weary and pained to ask. “Now…once more, Lyra. Push.”

Lyra didn’t want to. Suddenly, the task was too daunting, too overwhelming, too unfair. Will wasn’t here. She had been suffering for days now and pushing for hours. And she felt she didn’t have the energy it would take to push even one more time. She was physically and emotionally drained. Nothing was true anymore, not really: her alethiometer had lied to her. And if it had lied to her once, maybe it had been lying all along. Maybe her baby really _wasn’t_ fine. Maybe it wouldn’t even survive this. Maybe all of this would be for nothing. Maybe nothing had ever been true.

“I’m tired,” she whispered, her voice faint. Their voices sounded very far away. She couldn’t hear much above the sound of her own heartbeat. Her head felt heavy.

“Lyra. Lyra? Malcolm, nudge her, hit her, something—Lyra, don’t close your eyes!” Serafina ordered. 

Malcolm gently shook her shoulder. Lyra couldn’t find the energy to lift her head to look at him. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to sleep, and the urge was so overpowering that even the waves of pain contracting her lower body didn’t make her do more than whimper. Malcolm’s hand was shaking as he nudged her again.

“Lyra, c’mon,” he urged unsteadily. “Serafina…”

Lyra heard Kaisa make a horrifying squawking noise. She felt a thrill of fear race from Pantalaimon’s heart to hers. When she opened her eyes, Kaisa had Pantalaimon cornered against the pillows, and he was hissing and spitting and making all sorts of noises Lyra had never heard a goose make before. Pantalaimon’s chest was heaving from both fear and pain. Lyra felt the swell of nausea that he was feeling. It had shocked them both enough to wake them.

“I know you’re tired. I know,” Serafina said. Her voice shook, too. “I’m sorry. I know how much this hurts. I know how frightening this is. I’ve been through it, too. But I can promise you that it’s worth it in the end. Even now…even now when I think of my son…even though he’s gone…Lyra, I would do it all over again. All of it. You can do this. I _know_ you can. I won’t push you anymore; listen to your own body. But don’t give up. Trust yourself.”

Lyra didn’t even know what she meant. Trust who? Herself? She lied all the time. Apparently she even lied to herself, because she had believed that Will would be here, and he wasn’t.

But she had nothing left to rely on. Her body was telling her that she’d had enough. So she gave into the urge to sink further back into the pillows.  She kept her eyes shut. She felt the heaviness in her head grow. For a few short, blissful moments, she might have been snoozing lightly: her head was pleasantly clear, and she needed it so badly… she hadn’t had a moment of rest in hours…and then another contraction slammed into her, and she felt her heart begin to pound again, and a cry tore from her lips. She pulled her legs up of her own accord and her body pushed of its own accord, and her hands gripped her knees, and Pantalaimon was panting with pain near her ear, and Serafina was encouraging her and Malcolm was putting that damn damp cloth on her forehead again…and an urge to push overcame her, and with that urge came the energy to do it, the _will_ to do it, and she worked with the contractions rather than against them, and the cramping pain of her contractions changed into intense pressure in her pelvis, and…and…

And then there was pounding at the front door, loud enough that Lyra could hear it over her own racing heart.

* * *

 

Will slammed his fist against the wooden door so hard that the pain spread down to his elbow.

“Open up! Open up!” he cried.

From the front step, he could hear Lyra’s cries. He had never felt more terrified. He pounded even harder; the door was rattling now.

“Open the door! Open the damn door!”

He tried the doorknob again, but it was still locked. He moved over to the closest window.

“Let’s break it,” Kirjava said, her eyes wild with adrenaline and fear.

Will was bracing himself to do it. He’d begun looking around himself for the best possible object to use. But before he could, the door clicked open, and Iorek Byrnison’s huge head poked out into the cold night air.  

The bear hadn’t expected him.

Will hadn’t expected the bear.

There was a long, uncertain pause that might have been comical if it weren’t for Lyra’s cries in the background.

“Will,” said Iorek, his voice low and rumbling. He looked visibly relieved to see him. Will felt the same way.

“King Iorek,” said Will, his heart racing, his entire body quivering.

“Come,” said Iorek.

Iorek moved to the side, opening up the doorway. Will’s heart lurched. He pushed himself forward and into the stifling cottage. He could hardly get his gloves off; his body was trembling so hard. He had no idea if it was from the cold, his fear, or adrenaline, but after a moment, Iorek reached out and snagged the fabric of the gloves with his claw, yanking them off Will’s hands for him.

“She’s been back there a long time. Days,” Iorek said, his voice grave.

Will wanted to bolt back to the room he heard her cries originating from, but he forced himself to keep his wits. He dropped his furs to the floor, rolled up his sleeves, and then rushed over to the kitchen sink. He turned the ice-cold, sputtering tap on and snatched up a crude bar of waxy yellow soap. He scrubbed hard at his hands, his forearms, his wrists, under his nails…the water in the sink was dark with dirt as he rinsed the soap off. He washed once more after that just to make sure the germs from his travel were gone from his skin. He would’ve given anything for proper medical gloves, but there was no time. If she had been back there for days…and if she was crying out like that…something was probably wrong…he had to get back there, he had to help, he had to—

A cry joined Lyra’s, high-pitched and wailing.

The soap slipped from Will’s hands and clattered into the bottom of the sink.

Kirjava bolted back to the room without even waiting for Will. He could hardly feel the floor as he crossed the small cottage. He stepped into the opened room after Kirjava, and at first, all he could see was Lyra: her wayward hair, plastered to her face with sweat, her cracked lips, her wild, searching eyes as she looked down towards her baby. _Their baby_.

Will had never felt so overwhelmed. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, and an odd sound left him, something of a mixture of the two. Every head in the room turned in his direction then. Malcolm beamed. Serafina smiled brightly. And Lyra collapsed back against the pillows like a million worries had just been lifted from her shoulders, and it was then that she cried. But it was soft, and she was smiling at the same time, so Will wasn’t worried. Her soft cries intermingled with their child’s strong wailing, and Will’s tears trekked silently down his cheeks, and Serafina held the baby out to him.

“Dr. Parry?” she said, her lips twitching.

He had held hundreds of newborn infants. But when he reached for his own, he suddenly had a hundred fears settle over him. What if he dropped her? What if his hands were too shaky? What if he held her too tightly and he bruised her? What if she didn’t like him holding her—what if she cried?

But the doctor part of his brain took over, and he took his tiny daughter into his hands, and he made sure her airways were clear, and he gently wiped her skin clean with a warm, moistened towel, and then he found the tools Serafina had already set out and he clamped and cut the umbilical cord. And all the while, his and Lyra’s dæmons were leaning against each other at the end of the bed, their eyes on the baby, their tails swishing happily. Will’s heart was beating harder than it ever had the entire time. Once the baby was tended to, he carried her over to Lyra—to her mother—and he set her into her arms, so Lyra could hold the baby against her skin, so she could see her properly and feel the reassuring beating of her tiny, fluttering heart against her own. Lyra pressed her face against their daughter’s dark, downy hair, and her hand—nearly as big as the baby’s entire back—held the baby safely to her heart, her breaths shallow and choked with emotion. Kirjava and Pantalaimon climbed gently over Lyra and moved to perch carefully beside her chest, leaning against her but not touching the baby, their wide, enchanted eyes still on the child, purrs unfurling from both their mouths.

Will couldn’t stand anymore; his legs were going to give out from beneath him. He staggered and collapsed down onto the edge of the bed. A second later, he felt someone nudge his arm, and when he glanced back, Malcolm was holding a glass of water out for him.

“We’re going out there,” Malcolm said softly, nodding towards the sitting room. “Yell for us if you need us. Serafina will be right back in to check on her in a few minutes.”

Will nodded once and accepted the water. He knew it would take him years to thank Malcolm properly for all he’d done, but for now, he started with a tired smile.

Serafina closed the door after her, Kaisa, Malcolm, and Asta. Will slid up so he could lie beside Lyra, so tired that he couldn’t stay upright for a moment longer. Lyra seemed equally fatigued. She kissed their baby’s scalp gently once, twice, three times, her eyes still damp with tears, her every movement heavy and tender with love. She let her head fall to rest against Will’s shoulder. It didn’t escape his notice that this was the first time they had truly touched in over twelve years.

There were so many things to say. Too many. So he let his head fall against the top of hers, and he wrapped an arm around her, and he gazed down at their child with wonder in his eyes and a million hopes in his heart. Her protesting cries had died off remarkably quickly. She was drifting off to sleep against Lyra’s chest, soothed by her mother’s warm skin and beating heart. Will was entranced by her. She already had his dark hair. She would have his brows, too-- straight, dark, serious, though they were faint now as her hair was still very fine. But her mouth was a tiny, defiant pout that reminded him of Lyra, and the shape of her eyes was like her mother’s, too. Her nose was impossibly tiny, impossibly precious, and her cheeks were a healthy, glowing pink, and Will loved her. He loved her so much it filled him up to the point that he felt choked by it. He loved and cherished everything about her; he thought she was immaculate and wondrous, and he understood suddenly what the big fuss was about. Gazing down at her now, feeling like she was all that had ever truly mattered, he understood why the Church had moved mountains to try to get to her. Will would have, too (to protect her.)

He leaned over and he gently kissed her soft hair. Tears blurred his vision again. He sat back up, but he reached for his daughter’s tiny hand afterwards, and he smiled tearfully as she closed it around his thumb.

“She’s beautiful,” Kirjava said, her voice shaky with emotion.

Pantalaimon seemed too overjoyed to speak. He was as quiet and stunned as Lyra, staring wide-eyed at the child they’d all created, emotion flooding his face as he studied her perfect, tiny features. He didn’t know what to say. Will didn’t either. If he opened his mouth, he was certain he would just repeat: _she’s perfect, she’s perfect, she’s perfect_ , _I love her, I love her_ on a loop.

They rested together in reverent silence until Lyra’s body began to finish up the birthing process. Serafina came back in to help, and Will went to help her, too—because he _was_ a doctor—but Lyra held onto his arm, holding him in place beside her.

“Stay,” she begged. It was the first thing she’d said since the shock of birth. He listened.

He helped her get the baby situated to nurse and that helped speed up the last part of the birthing process, though it still seemed to take longer than Will remembered learning that it would. It was weird for him to sit in the bed while someone else played the role of doctor, but Serafina must’ve known what she was doing: Lyra hardly seemed to notice what was going on with her lower half. She just kept smiling and kissing their baby, and leaning her head against Will and holding his hand, and Will only knew she was having contractions because he’d felt them when he’d set a hand on her stomach.

After it was all said and done, and Will had been given permission to leave her side long enough to thoroughly check to make sure that she was okay and that there were no medical complications to address (there weren’t, Serafina had done an impeccable job), Lyra and Will were left alone. Their daughter had fallen asleep soon after nursing; her cheek was smushed over Lyra’s heart and her lips were parted as she slept deeply. It was the most precious sight he had ever seen. Kirjava and Pantalaimon agreed; they couldn’t stop looking at her. They stretched out along the pillows above Lyra and Will’s heads, talking quietly together, peering adoringly at the new little human that had come from _their_ humans.

“It was true,” Lyra said tearfully. Will looked down at her at once. He brushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears for her, each movement as gentle as his movements were when he held the baby. If their daughter was something precious and fragile, Lyra was transcendent and strong. He gazed at her and he couldn’t help but feel awed. To him, the baby was perfect, and Lyra was the only one who ever could have created something so good.  

“What was true?” he finally asked quietly.

“Everything,” she said, and then she beamed. “You’re here. You’re really here. _You_.”

She leaned up and kissed his face clumsily, her lips falling softly and sweetly against anywhere she could reach, exhaustion palpable in every kiss. He cradled her face gently and kissed her lips. He had thought his heart was so full of love that he couldn’t possibly feel anymore, but he had been wrong. That had been before he kissed Lyra again.

“Of course I am,” he said, and right then, it was insane to think there had ever been a time that he’d worried he wouldn’t get to her in time. Of course he would. He was Will. And she was Lyra. And _this_ was how they were always meant to be: together.

There was much to tell her about his journey to her, and she had so much to tell him about what she had gone through here in Svalbard, but now was not the time. Now was the time to hold each other, and kiss each other, and marvel at the child they had created. And that’s what they did, unrushed and happier than either of them had ever been before, until Lyra’s exhaustion won out.

“Will you take her?” asked Lyra. “I’m going to fall asleep.” Her voice was slurred, and when he looked at her, she looked more exhausted than he had ever seen her. She was certainly wiped out from the days of labor and hours of pushing.

Will reached out and lifted their newborn daughter very carefully. He adjusted her nappy—it was a bit too big for her, she was tinier than he’d expected, though she was perfectly healthy despite that—and laid her gently on his chest. He tucked her soft, white baby blanket around her. Pantalaimon curled up underneath the edge of it.

“There we go,” Will whispered softly. He rubbed her itty back gently with his left hand. He leaned down and kissed her feather-soft hair afterwards. She gave a tiny yawn—Kirjava _aww_ ed aloud at the sight—and then drifted right back into a deep, secure sleep. It made Will’s heart feel impossibly tender to know that she felt safe with him. She felt safe in his arms. And she should: he would never let anybody harm her. Even the mere _thought_ was unbearable.

“I know what I want to call her,” Lyra mumbled tiredly.

He’d thought she was already asleep. She had curled up against the side of his body and her breathing had evened out. But she must have been reflecting on the events of that day.

“Yeah?” Will asked. “What?”

“Vera.”

He smiled. He tried it out. “Vera.”

“From the Latin _verus_ —truth. She’s the truest thing I’ve ever known.”

He both understood and didn’t understand what she said. He couldn’t have explained it to anybody else, but he felt it in his heart just as keenly as she did.

“I love it,” he whispered. He turned his face and kissed Lyra’s hair, and then he lifted Vera’s tiny hand from beneath the blankets and kissed it, too.

* * *

 

He somehow managed to stay awake until his mum and Mary arrived. He wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline, or just his determination not to put Vera down even for a moment, but he stayed conscious and focused the entire time Lyra slept at his side.

But when his mum and Mary walked in the bedroom, his mum’s eyes already brimming with tears before she even saw Vera, his exhaustion crashed back into him. It was all he could do not to let his eyelids fall shut and stay shut right then.

“I was hoping she’d be awake,” Mary said sadly, her eyes on Lyra. Lyra was plastered to Will’s side and so deeply asleep that she hadn’t stirred in hours.

“Don’t wake her,” Will said at once. He yawned afterwards; he couldn’t help it. “She was in labor for days.”

Mary grimaced. “And _that_ is one of the reasons I never had children. Oh, but she _is_ adorable, isn’t she…” she turned her focus on Vera and walked over to perch on the edge of the bed beside Will and the baby.

Will looked over at his mum while Mary smiled at the baby. She was stuck in place, her eyes wide and teary, looking from Lyra to Vera over and over again.

“Are you okay, Mum?” Will finally asked.

She collapsed into tears at once. “No,” she said, and then: “I’m so happy for you, Will.”

 _He_ was happy. The feeling was overwhelming and all-consuming. He laughed and smiled at his mum.

“It’s a good thing, Mum, don’t cry,” he said.

“I’m just so happy,” she admitted, and it made his heart widen with love to know that she was happy, too. She walked over and sat beside Mary on the edge of the bed. She reached out, her fingers trembling, and gently touched Vera’s hair. “Is it a girl or a boy?”

“A girl. Vera.”

“Vera. Faith? An interesting choice considering what the prophecy says about her,” Mary mused.

Will frowned. “No. Like _verus_. Truth.”

“Oh,” Mary realized. “It also means faith.” She reached out tentatively—like she was reaching towards something extremely fragile or perhaps even dangerous—and touched Vera’s back. She smiled brighter a second later. “Oh, she’s so tiny.” Vera sighed a tiny sigh in her sleep. Mary seemed to melt. “She’s so _precious_ ,” she realized, starstruck.

“Can I…” Will’s mum trailed off and gestured towards Vera. Will was more than willing, and in fact, was thankful for the offer: he was certain he couldn’t stay awake a moment longer, and he trusted Mary and his mum completely.

“Here you go,” he said. He took his time carefully placing Vera in his mum’s open arms. He wondered for a moment if she remembered how to hold a newborn baby, but it was clearly something one never forgot. She held her confidently and steadily, tears rolling down her face, her smile wider than Will had ever seen.

“Vera,” she whispered sweetly. “You look so much like your dad. Oh, you sweet girl…you’re already so loved…”

Mary leaned over his mum’s shoulder and peered curiously at Vera. Will’s eyes had drifted shut against his will.

“I have to sleep,” he told them. “Will you watch her? If you get tired…Serafina and Malcolm…” he couldn’t finish his sentence. Talking was too difficult. He turned over onto his side and wrapped his arms around Lyra’s sleeping frame. Pantalaimon and Kirjava were already curled up together and snoozing on Lyra’s other side. He breathed in the still-lingering scent of her lavender soap and fell asleep before he could even form another coherent thought.

* * *

 

Mary was intrigued. Of all the things she had studied and learned during her long and lovely life, newborn infants were not part of the arsenal. And so, like she found anything new and wonderful she stumbled upon, she found Vera fascinating.

“And when do the dæmons appear?” Mary asked. She was standing close to Serafina’s side, watching with interest as Serafina bundled the baby up in a warm blanket. Elaine was nearby, rummaging through a bag with baby clothes in search of a knitted hat.

“I think hers will appear soon,” Serafina said, smiling down at the baby. She had opened her eyes and was gazing calmly in Serafina’s direction, the pout of her mouth almost serious, like she was imploring Serafina to do something in a language only she understood. “She’s very aware, see? She can’t look directly at me from this far—her eye sight isn’t that developed yet—but she turns her head towards me when I speak.”

Mary studied the baby intently. “And the dæmons appear when they’re aware? That makes sense, actually. If Dust is matter thinking of matter, the babies would need to be conscious and able to at least think in some sort of way.”

Serafina nodded. She lifted the baby up once she was swaddled warmly and passed her to Elaine. Elaine took her expertly—Mary envied her confidence; she was certain she wouldn’t be able to get herself to hold the baby at all, the idea was too terrifying, the baby looked so fragile—and pulled a tiny blue hat on her head.

“Some don’t appear for months after birth,” Serafina said. “That usually causes quite a fuss in the family.”

“I can imagine,” Mary said.

Serafina left to go check in on Lyra. Mary, Malcolm, and even King Iorek were drawn to the baby like moths to a flame. They peered over Elaine’s shoulders at her, watching her tiny face furrow in different expressions, listening to the soft sound of her breathing. Mary couldn’t believe how much affection she was feeling as she gazed at the infant. She didn’t even know her! She had only just come into this world! And yet, Mary felt her heart grow tender, and she felt like she would have done anything for her. She supposed it made sense. She had watched Will grow up. She had lived with him, had sort of helped raise him—as much as he had allowed himself to be raised, anyway. She had loved and worried over Lyra for decades on end. In a way, this baby was sort of her family, too. She smiled.

“Do you want to hold her?” Elaine asked suddenly, and Mary felt a shock of trepidation, assuming she was talking to her, but when she looked at her, she saw she was looking at Malcolm.

Malcolm looked shy and honored. “I dunno…she’s really tiny…maybe if I’m sitting down.”

“Okay,” Elaine nodded.

Malcolm walked over to sit on the sofa. Mary decided to join him: she wasn’t brave enough to hold the newborn, but she could sit beside her while somebody else did. Elaine lowered Vera down into Malcolm’s waiting arms, and Mary thought that he seemed rather skilled at holding a baby for all the nervousness he’d expressed. He cradled her and grinned down at her.

“Hello there,” he said, delighted, brimming with tenderness. Mary found herself admiring the way it made his entire face brighten, like rays of sunshine were falling over it. “You put up quite a fuss with all that kicking, didn’t you? You don’t seem half as angry now that you’re out here. I bet being born was quite tiring. Are you all kicked out?” he gently tapped her foot through the blankets. The baby made a soft gurgling noise, and then she tried to kick out at his hand, but the blankets were too restricting. Malcolm and Mary laughed the same laugh, and then they looked at each other briefly and grinned. They turned back to the infant a moment later.

“ _That’s_ the baby I knew,” Malcolm laughed.

“She’s special,” Mary said, knowing that everybody probably said that about every baby, but feeling it genuinely with every bit of her heart anyway.

“Incredibly so,” Malcolm agreed at once. He turned to look at Mary again, and it was then that she realized they had never properly introduced themselves to each other. She stuck her hand out.

“Dr. Mary Malone. Will’s world.”

He grinned again. He shifted Vera very carefully and then placed his hand in Mary’s, giving it a brief shake. His hands were rough with callouses. “Dr. Malcolm Polstead. Lyra’s world.”

Mary was surprised at the _doctor_ bit. She had forgotten that Malcolm was one of Lyra’s scholars. “What’s your area?”

“History of ideas first. Metaphysics later.” 

“Ah, a humanities scholar,” she teased. 

“I’m guessing you’re a scientist.”

“Physicist. But I dabble.”

“Oh? In?”

“A bit of everything,” admitted Mary. “I believe it’s the same for you, correct? I hear you’re quite the sailor.”

“Well, you’ll have to ask little Vera about that,” Malcolm said, and then he looked down at the baby again. She was nearing sleep. “I nearly got her killed, didn’t I? So I’m not so sure I’m ready to call myself a sailor again any time soon.”

“She looks all right to me,” Mary said, but she lowered her voice to a whisper, because the baby’s eyelids were drifting shut.

Serafina exited the bedroom.

“How’s Lyra?” Iorek asked at once.

“Doing well, but still exhausted. I told her to sleep a bit longer.”

“Will?” Elaine asked.

“Exhausted, too. Elaine, tell me about your journey here.”

Elaine and Mary took turns telling Serafina all about their non-stop trip from Namibia to Svalbard. Serafina nodded when Elaine told her that Will had ran all the way here from the edge of the settlement as if she’d expected as much. She, Malcolm, and Iorek seemed bothered by their recounting of the churchmen who’d stopped them at the port.

“How many were at that one port?” Serafina asked.

“I saw about six, maybe?” Elaine said, looking quizzically at Mary to verify. Mary nodded.

“Yes, it was around that many,” she affirmed. “They were checking to see if we had weapons. They also said they’d be checking what the gyptians brought _back_ to the boat.”

Iorek and Serafina exchanged a look.

“They’re checking to make sure Lord Faa isn’t planning to smuggle Lyra or the baby out,” Malcolm realized.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Serafina said.

Mary—like everybody else—had been caught up in the rush of new life. She hadn’t been thinking of their main problem: the Church. But it all came crashing back down on them now. They frowned and silence trickled over them.

“So what do we do?” Mary wondered, finally breaking the group silence. “About the Church.”

“For right now, we must monitor things carefully,” Serafina said. “We are hoping Lyra’s story dissuades people from joining the Church’s cause.”

“We could try to flee,” suggested Malcolm. He clearly didn’t like the idea of sitting here cornered any more than Mary did.

“No,” Iorek said, his voice fierce and booming. Everybody looked at him at once. Elaine still seemed terribly uncomfortable around him, and when he spoke like that, she walked over to stand uneasily by the baby, as if she feared he was a threat. “They stay here. We can protect them here.”

“You’ll ask all the panserbjørne to fight if it comes to that, Iorek?” asked Serafina.

“No. I will ask those who _want_ to fight to fight. And it will be most of them. She has lived alongside us for many months, and most of these bears have known her for decades.”

Elaine spoke up for the first time. Mary was proud of her: she knew all of this was a lot to take in, and on top of it she had a brand new granddaughter to worry about, but she was keeping up well.

“The Church wants the baby, right? They think she’s…the antichrist?” Elaine clarified. Her voice was drenched with the same incredulity that they were all surely feeling. Now that the baby was here, the idea seemed even more ridiculous. Mary was certain she’d never in her life seen anything more innocent than Vera.

“Yes,” Serafina answered. “They are basing this on a prophecy that may or may not actually exist. I personally believe it does, though I’m sure the Church has interpreted it incorrectly as the Church seems adept at doing. Malcolm and Lyra, however, think it’s fabricated. Right?”

Malcolm nodded. “I can’t know for certain, of course, but I believe the Church made this prophecy up to justify going after Lyra and her baby. They know enough about Lyra and Will to rightly fear them having a child. If they claim the child is the antichrist, it gives them the justification for going after her.” There was a pause. “I found it funny when that spell told me what her name would be. Vera. Were Lyra and Will being cheeky?”

Mary sat up straighter. “Right?! Because it means faith! I noticed that, too. Lyra says it’s for the Latin meaning, though: truth.”

“ _Ah_ ,” Malcolm realized. He laughed. “Yes, that makes sense. Still…hmm…” he didn’t finish his thought, though it looked to be an intriguing one.

“Perhaps the Church _did_ fabricate the prophecy,” allowed Serafina. Mary admired the way she spoke to everybody with utmost respect no matter their differing opinions. She thought she could live until she were a thousand and never manage to be as graceful and kind-hearted as Serafina Pekkala. She was glad to be with her again. “Either way, they seek to destroy the child, and certainly Lyra, too, and I don’t think they’d lament it if Will were destroyed in the process.”

Elaine’s eyes widened. “Well, we don’t have this…CDC—”

“CCD,” corrected Malcolm gently.

“We don’t have that in my world. Can’t Lyra, Will, and the baby just come back through the door and stay there?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Serafina answered. “Lyra would die, and perhaps the baby, too. It is what killed your husband, Elaine: he stayed too long in a world not his own and ultimately perished from it. She can visit your world for a few months at a time, but she’ll always have to come back here to maintain her health. Running from this world for good is not an option.”

“The only option is destroying the Church once and for all,” Iorek said firmly.

“It’s the only solution I can presently see,” agreed Serafina. “And it would certainly be better for the world. Look at all the Church does...mutilating children in a variety of nasty ways, telling adults their natural desires and urges are evil, rallying against free thought and education…the world would be better off without it. But the world would not be better off with Lyra and Will and this child. And _that_ is why my clan, and at least two others, will stand by her if it comes to a battle.”

“I think Lord Faa would, too,” Elaine said. She had been very impressed by the king of the gyptians and already seemed to hold him at great esteem.

“Almost certainly,” agreed Serafina. She smiled softly. “Coram, at any rate, would never sit this one out. And do we still have the support of Oakley Street, Malcolm?”

“What’s left of it, yes. Hannah hardly sleeps at night anymore; she spends every waking moment assembling support for our cause, the anti-Church cause.”

“And the Church has the Church,” Mary summarized. She was feeling much more optimistic than she’d felt before. She looked down at sleeping Vera and smiled at her.

“Yes, but don’t write them off so quickly,” Malcolm answered her. “The Church in my world operates with hardly any restrictions or checks on its power. There is little the Church cannot do, and those few things it can’t, it will do anyway.”

“But there was an angel in this world,” Elaine recalled suddenly. “And it was on our side, I think…it was guarding the door, anyway…surely angels are stronger than the Church. And that angel made Will promise something…”

Serafina was intrigued at once. “Really? What was that?”

“I’m not sure. But he didn’t look happy about it. I was worried about him,” Elaine said.

Serafina glanced at Mary. She shook her head. “We were stuck back on the other side of the door while they were talking. You’ll have to ask Will.”

“Hmm,” Serafina said. “This might change things. As soon as things are safe enough, I’ll make the journey to that door so I can speak with the angel myself.”

Vera gave a sudden, sputtering cry of discontent. Serafina crossed over and took her from Malcolm’s arms.

“Let’s get you back to your parents, little one,” she murmured to the baby. “I’ll check on Mummy while you get a proper snuggle and feeding.”

The baby’s presence in the room had clearly had some sort of calming effect on the adults, because as soon as Vera was safely behind the closed bedroom door with her parents, the emotions went from calculating to infuriating.

“Who do they think they are? This Church of your world?” Elaine demanded. She had angry red splotches on her cheeks. Mary had rarely seen her this angry; it made her resemble her son in all his fierce, commanding glory even more. “She’s an infant. She just entered the world a couple hours ago. And they’ve already decided she has to die?”

Mary felt the same protective anger that Elaine did. “They should have been destroyed long ago,” she spat. “I can’t believe the people of your world put up with this sort of behavior!”

“You should have seen the things they were doing to children on Bolvangar,” Iorek grumbled. “It was unspeakable.”

For the next couple of hours, the adults indulged their anger, and a silent pact was made without having to be verbalized: they would all do whatever they had to do in the fight to come. For most of them, it wasn’t even their fight, and had one thing gone differently, they might not have even known about the battle brewing. But they were all here, and their lives were intrinsically intertwined with Lyra’s, Will’s, and Vera’s, and that made this every bit their battle, too.

* * *

 

Lyra couldn’t believe how much better she felt after her nap. Serafina gently woke her, and she wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but she felt as if she’d had the most effective nap of her life. She knew Will’s arms around her had had something to do with it.

“How are you feeling?” Serafina asked her. She perched gently on the edge of the bed and reached over Will to feel Lyra’s face.

“Better now that I’ve slept,” Lyra answered. Serafina had Vera clutched to her with her right arm, and Lyra felt her heart jolt with longing, as if every atom of her was reaching for her child. For a moment, all Lyra could focus on was Vera’s cries, and the instinctual urge she felt to fix whatever problem Vera perceived there to be was overwhelming.

“She’s hungry, I think. Do you want to nurse her? Or do you want me to give her some milk powder? We have plenty,” Serafina asked.  

“I can do it,” Lyra said. She gently pushed Will’s warm arms from her and moved to sit up. She winced as she did: she still felt sore, but it wasn’t even _close_ to the pain she’d felt before her baby was here, so she found it easy to push it away to some distant corner of her mind. She reached out for her daughter as soon as she was leaning against the headboard. Her heart settled and calmed as soon as she had her baby resting in her arms.

“I don’t think my brain is used to her being _out here_ ,” Lyra mused. She didn’t like the blankets swaddled around Vera; they looked constricting. She unraveled her from them and set them to the side, choosing instead to drape the soft white blanket over her to keep her warm. Lyra felt even more at ease with her baby’s skin against hers. “It feels much better to have her here with me. When I woke up before…and she was out there in the other room…and my stomach was all…empty…” she trailed off with a frown. “It was the oddest I’ve ever felt.”

“I wish I could say that changes, but I don’t think it ever does much,” Serafina said. “It never felt right to have my boy far from me. I was only ever fully at peace when he was there with me and I knew he was safe. I imagine all parents feel that way.”

“Most parents,” Lyra corrected, thinking of hers.

“The _good_ ones,” Serafina amended. “And you’re a good one, Lyra. I can already tell.”

Lyra glowed at that praise. She wanted very much to be good at this, and if Serafina thought she was, she believed her.

She was proud and amused at the eagerness with which her daughter took to her breast. For such a tiny, brand-new thing, she seemed to need no instruction on anything, even though she had only nursed briefly the one time before this.

“She’s quite clever, isn’t she?” Lyra said. She gently stroked her soft, dark hair with her free hand, her other clutching Vera securely to her. “I mean, I imagine most of it is instinctual, I guess. Is it?”

“Newborns are born with the instincts they need to keep them alive. But I think your daughter _is_ clever already. She’s got an appetite, at any rate, and that’s important.”

“Yes,” Lyra said proudly.

Serafina went to rise from the bed, but Lyra looked at her quickly, mildly alarmed. “Do you have to go already?”

Serafina sat back down. “No, I don’t have to. I thought you might want time alone with her.”

Lyra didn’t think of Serafina as somebody who could intrude on anything. “I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. Can you stay to make sure I don’t do something wrong?”

Serafina smiled. “Of course.”

Serafina talked softly about interesting yet mild things, like recent changes on Lake Enara, and upheavals in nearby clans. Lyra listened to Serafina with half her focus and kept the other half on Vera at all times. She found that she, too, had some sort of instincts, though she wasn’t sure where they came from. She knew without having to be told to move Vera to her other breast when the baby slowed her feeding and began to appear sleepy, her little fists opening up to splay her warm hands against Lyra’s skin, her chest moving up and down with deep, steady breaths.

“Now?” Lyra asked, just to be sure, and Serafina nodded.

She felt she was getting the hang of it, and considering it was something so crucial to her baby’s survival, that made her feel a rush of accomplishment and security. It grew less uncomfortable the longer Vera kept at it, and soon, Lyra decided she was just a natural at this.

“I think I’ll be good at this,” she boasted, and Serafina laughed and laughed, though Lyra wasn’t sure why she found it so funny. Serafina leaned over Will again and kissed the top of Lyra’s head affectionately.

“I do love you, you know,” she told Lyra, and Lyra beamed. “You’re my sister for as long as you live. And that could never be long enough.”

She had told Lyra these things before, but never with as much emotion in her words as she had then. Lyra was eager to gush back with the same affirmations of love and loyalty: she had always admired and adored Serafina, and now, after everything they’d been through together, that love had only grown.

Her daughter fell into a deep, contented sleep a few minutes later. Lyra couldn’t stop looking at her: at her little hands, her fine dark brows, her soft hair, her sweet face. She couldn’t believe she had made something so wonderful. Her daughter seemed to be crafted with the same sort of delicate precision that her alethiometer was: she was astounded by the beauty and perfection of both. Though, to Lyra, the sleeping newborn on her chest seemed to hold more power than even the alethiometer did.

Pantalaimon stirred soon after and came over to drape himself across Lyra’s neck, right above the baby, careful not to touch her. Lyra felt his astonished adoration as he watched Vera.

“It was worth it,” he said, his voice still tired, and Lyra knew he was talking about the pain.

“By far,” Lyra agreed. She set a hand on Pan’s fur and smiled as he rubbed the top of his head against her chin.  

After watching Vera sleep for nearly a half-hour and ignoring her need for the loo as long as she possibly could, Lyra resigned herself to the fact that she’d have to move. She was a bit worried that standing up and walking would hurt miserably, but it was actually better than sitting. Lyra transferred Vera to the cot set up near the bed and let Serafina assist her to the bathroom. Her legs still felt a bit wobbly, so she leaned against the wall as Serafina filled the bathtub with warm water. She took her time washing the blood and sweat from her body, comforted by the sight of her peaceful, sleeping child every time she peeked through the open door into the bedroom, and she felt infinitely better once she stepped clean from the bath.

Pantalaimon had curled back up with Kirjava by the time Lyra returned to the bedroom. And despite how deeply Kirjava was still sleeping, Will roused as she climbed back into bed beside him. He turned and pressed his face against her damp shoulder. His kiss was sleepy and soft.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Good,” she said proudly. “I’m great at all this.”

He yawned and then rolled over onto his back, blinking up at the ceiling. Lyra leaned over his face and smiled down at him. He had smiled back by the time she leaned down to kiss his lips. And when Lyra carefully set Vera in his arms, his smile grew to a grin. Lyra watched with giddy-feeling joy as he cuddled their daughter, his large hand cradling her to him, his lips pressing gently to her hair. 

“Will,” Serafina said, hovering near the door. “I have something I need to ask before I leave. Your mum and Mary, they told me about the angel at the door between this world and yours. They said the angel made you promise something. What did he ask of you?”

Lyra felt Will grow tense. She looked over at him, concerned. He had his cheek resting gently against their daughter’s scalp, and she didn’t think she was imagining the protective way he seemed to be holding her, as if there was a threat out there that nobody else could see. He glanced over at Lyra, his eyes soft with love, and then he looked back down at their daughter.

“He made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody about the door,” he finally said. “He said that if I told anybody else that it existed—anybody outside of the people who already know, of course, like you, my mum, Mary, and Malcolm—that he would close it for good.”

“Really?” asked Serafina. “Interesting. Did he say why it had to remain a secret?”

“Well,” said Will, and it was then that Lyra realized he was lying. He had paused just a bit too long. “He said he’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to hide the door from the other angels, and if we made it common knowledge, they’d find it, and so it would end up being closed for good.”

“I see,” said Serafina. She could read the tense lines on Will’s body. He obviously did not want to talk about this. “Well, I’ll let you have some time alone with your family. I believe they’re cooking a meal out there, so I’ll let you both know once it’s ready.”

Lyra’s stomach growled at the thought. She hadn’t realized how famished she was until that very moment. She hoped Malcolm was cooking.

“Thank you,” Will told her.

Lyra waited until she’d closed the door after herself, and then she looked up at Will and said: “You lied.”

“I did,” he agreed. “And I lied to the angel, too.”

“About _what_?” Lyra asked, baffled. “Was it the angel who gave you the ability to see me?”

“Lyra,” he said, and then he looked at her, his eyes wet with tears. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. Is that okay? Can we just…can we just sit here and forget about all that? About everything else? There’s so much wrong, I know there is, but right now…I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to be here with you and with Vera.”

She could see worry, regret, and guilt eating him up, but she didn’t understand why or where the emotions were coming from. She wanted to know so she could help him. But if he needed to push it away for right now, they would push it away. There were more important things happening, after all.

“So tell me about it,” he prompted, after a long pause. “The birth. What happened?”

“Oh, it was _awful_ ,” Lyra said with relish, and soon she was giving him an animated retelling of the entire process, from the first twinges of pain she’d had in her back to the moment she’d felt her child slide from her body. “And the worst part was that I thought my alethiometer had lied to me, ‘cause it told me you’d be there when the baby was born, but my labor went on and on for the longest time and you were nowhere to be found, but I guess you technically were there _when_ she was born, just not before.”

It felt so good to admit all of this to someone. And he was the only one she ever would have.

“I tried to get to you before. I tried so hard, Lyra. I was so…after I visited you briefly that one time, I was sick for weeks…I thought I’d never find you. But I did…and I’m here with you. Lyra, I’m _here_. I won’t go away. Nobody can take me away. I’m me—you’re you. We’re together again.”

It hit her with the same intensity that it hit him. In the rush of giving birth, she’d hardly been able to comprehend it. But it felt very real now, and as she looked up into his eyes, she felt as if he was seeing and hearing every part of her that ever existed or ever would.

“And _she’s_ here,” he said, his voice growing softer. He gazed down at their child. She was asleep in his arms, as content as she’d been in Lyra’s, like somehow she knew that he was her dad, that he was half of her. “It almost doesn’t feel real. I can’t believe how much I love her.”

“She’s so lovely,” Lyra agreed fiercely.

“Like you,” they said together, and then their cheeks pinked like they were naïve twelve-year-olds again, and then they laughed.

“I don’t know what we do now,” Will admitted, and Lyra was certain the heaviness in his tone had something to do with the secret he was keeping. “But I do know something, Lyra. This was right. We were right. Us being together, us having her…it was right with the world, with the universe.”

And she knew that was the truth.

* * *

 

Lyra was just as overjoyed to see Farder Coram and John Faa as they were to see her and Vera.

They had to return to the ship to keep up appearances with the Church—they expected them back as soon as they delivered their trade goods—but they stopped by Lyra’s cottage first, and she had never been more thankful. She hugged Farder Coram gently, mindful of how frail he looked, and Lord Faa tightly, and then she turned and pointed proudly at Vera. She was lying atop Will’s chest on the sofa, snoozing peacefully while the adults played poker around the coffee table.

“That’s my baby,” Lyra said, and she had never felt more proud of anything in her entire life. She beamed.

Soon, Farder Coram was sitting on the sofa, Vera cradled in his arms, Sophonax looking on with a serene smile. He smiled brighter than Lyra had ever seen. Serafina hovered behind the sofa, her slender hand set on Farder Coram's shoulder, her eyes as soft with love as his were.

“Don’t you worry,” Farder Coram cooed to Vera. She looked up at him, her blue eyes intent like she was absorbing every word. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

John Faa was just as pleased when it was his turn to hold her. He held her up in the air and marveled at her.

“A warrior if I ever saw one,” he declared. He lowered Vera slightly and spoke to her. “Isn’t that right? You’re something to be feared, you are—look how terrifying…the Church’s worst nightmare!”

Vera gurgled and kicked her legs. John Faa fell into laughter at once. He brought her back to his chest and bounced her ever so gently. He looked across the room and met Lyra’s eyes.

“She’s beautiful,” he said, and Lyra knew he meant in every way. “We're glad to have gotten to meet her.”

“Come back and see us again,” Lyra pleaded. “And bring the Costas.”

“You will certainly see us all again,” Farder Coram promised. He had set his wrinkled hand atop Serafina’s. She was smiling softly, but Lyra thought she saw pain at the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t imagine how hard it must be to see her lover—the father of her child—so decrepit. She must have felt such sadness and frustration. She must have wanted to stop the progression of time so much it made her ill. But nobody could control time, and gazing at Farder Coram and Serafina, Lyra was certain that that was the greatest tragedy of all.

Serafina walked over towards the door when Farder Coram and John Faa stood. “I’m escorting them back to the boat, and then I’m going with them to visit with Hannah Relf. I will be back soon.”

Lyra took Vera from John Faa and then looked wistfully at Serafina. “Oh, can you bring Dame Hannah here? I want her to meet Vera and Will.”

“I believe she has duties to attend to there in Oxford,” Serafina said. “But I’ll extend your invitation.”

Lyra shifted Vera to her left arm and gave Farder Coram, Lord Faa, and Serafina a one-armed hug one last time, and then they walked out into the snow. For a moment, Lyra stood pained at the doorway, her eyes on Farder Coram’s shuffling gait, worried that this would be the very last time she would ever see him. But then Will called for her.

“Lyra, come back, they’re demolishing me over here,” he said.

They both knew that he was just trying to cheer her up, but she indulged his efforts anyway. With her back still to them, Lyra teased: “That’s because you’re rubbish at poker.”

“I’m _not_ ,” he scoffed, and when Lyra turned around, he had that dark scowl on his face that she loved so much. His brows—so much like Vera’s, like his own mother’s—were furrowed severely over his eyes. Lyra laughed. She leaned over and kissed Vera’s forehead, and once she’d joined Will on the sofa again, she kissed his, too. She peeked at his cards.

“Oh, Will, you’re in trouble,” she said solemnly. He wasn’t really; she’d said it to make Malcolm, Mary, and Elaine feel more confident than they should have, because Will’s hand was actually pretty good.

“Poker is _not_ a team game,” Mary tsked.

“Yeah,” Malcolm agreed, following Mary’s lead. “That’s not fair. Don’t help him, Lyra!”

“I’m won’t,” she lied, but as soon as they looked back at their own cards, she leaned up and whispered a string of instructions in Will’s ear. When Malcolm and Mary looked over at her, she quickly preoccupied herself with Vera. Will reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist, his fingers stroking gently against her side, and when Lyra glanced up at him again, his eyes were full of such love that she felt she could’ve drowned happily in it.

* * *

 

A splash of warm water met Lyra’s face. She made a comical expression and straightened with affront.

“Oh!” Lyra exclaimed, surprised. She fell into giggles right afterwards. Will—who was cradling their baby in his hands and holding her half underwater in the wash basin, so most her body was submerged but her head and umbilical cord stump weren’t—joined in. He observed Lyra as she wiped the water impatiently out of her eyes and felt certain she had never looked so beautiful as she looked then, with her face glowing with amusement, her eyes soft with love, her golden hair tied up messily at the top of her head.

Vera kicked once more. Will tore his eyes from Lyra and looked down at her.

“Vera!” he said, amused. “Kicking the water won’t make it go away, you know. I thought you decided you liked it now?”

She hadn’t been impressed with her first bath initially: she had hollered and screamed so loudly that Iorek had come bounding to the cottage to make sure everything was okay. But after a few moments, she’d gotten used to the sensation of the water on her skin and Lyra’s gentle touch as she bathed her, and she’d settled down. Now, however, she seemed to be overcome by restlessness. She kicked the water again, splashing Lyra in the eyes once more.

“She just likes kicking,” Malcolm piped up from the sofa. He and Mary were reading something together.

Iorek—having determined that neither Vera nor Lyra were in danger—left to go back to his previous task, but not before warning Lyra.

“Aobel’s going to sneak over here one of these days. Maja’s supposed to be keeping an eye on her, but the cub is relentless. Send her away and don’t even open the door for her.”

“Sure,” Lyra said, but everybody knew she was lying. She’d invite the cub in the second she saw her approach.

Will adjusted Vera; her kicking was making her slip and slide in his hands. It didn’t help that her skin was wet.

“She’s quite a squirmy little thing,” he grumbled. “Kirjava, will you grab one of the towels so we’ll have it ready?”

Kirjava and Pantalaimon—both perched beside the wash basin and watching the baby with interest—answered his call. Pantalaimon carried the front of the towel and Kirjava carried the end of it. They set it beside Will.

“Thanks,” he said.

The dæmons perched on the edges of the basin. Pan passed the soap to Lyra. She lathered it between her hands and then reached down to gently wash Vera’s hair. Vera started to cry at first, but soon decided it wasn’t so bad. She lay contentedly in Will’s hands as Lyra gently massaged the soap into her scalp and then carefully poured water over her hair to rinse it out. She made a happy gurgling sort of noise.

“I think she likes that,” Will said with a smile.

“I think so, too. It’s nice, see? Baths are nice,” Lyra told her.

Having washed the soap from her hair, Lyra set the cup she’d been using to pour water over their daughter to the side. Will lifted her up out of the water, so they could dry her off and dress her, and at once, she began shrieking. He guessed the cold air wasn’t too enjoyable. Instinctively, he lowered her back down into the warm water, and her crying stopped. She looked up at him, and he looked at her, and in her wide, blue eyes, he swore he could see her brain working. He could see her puzzling over this strange new experience and figuring out that crying made the bad things—the cold air—go away. He feigned sternness.

“Now don’t think I’m spoiling you,” he told her. “Don’t think I’m just going to give you whatever you want just because you cry.”

She gurgled again. His heart melted. He went to lift her again, and she screamed again, and he found himself lowering her back into the water again, and then—

“Oh!! _Will_!” Lyra exclaimed, her voice loud with delight. Will looked over at Lyra and followed her gaze, and then, with a shock to his heart, he saw what had made her cry out: a tiny baby dæmon, in a form Will had never seen before. It had a shape that resembled Pantalaimon’s lithe, ferret-like body, but it was distinctly cat-like too, with faint spots that resembled a cheetah’s beneath its soft, dark coat. It had appeared curled up on their daughter’s chest, and as soon as it did, she kicked her legs wilder than before. The dæmon didn’t seem to mind the water, and in fact, it crept off Vera and splashed down into the water bravely. Almost at once, it began to sink, and Vera put up such a fuss that Will instinctively lifted her up to cradle her—but that made it worse, because she felt the painful pull between herself and her dæmon, and her shrieking only grew in volume.

Kirjava and Pantalaimon both jumped right into the basin after the baby dæmon. Kirjava gently bit the nape of its neck and lifted it up. Pantalaimon moved underneath her, so she could set the shaking baby on his back, and then he carefully climbed from the basin.

“What form has it taken?” Lyra demanded, her voice trembling with excitement.

“I have no idea,” Will said, shaken by its sudden appearance. Will carried Vera over closer to her dæmon so she would calm down. He sat on the edge of the table beside Kirjava and Pantalaimon: Pantalaimon was nuzzling the water from the baby dæmon’s fur while Kirjava spoke soothingly to it. After a moment of being tended to, it hopped up and wobbled over towards Vera. Will wrapped the baby tight in a towel so she wouldn’t get too cold, and then he lowered her down carefully, inviting the dæmon to reunite with his person. He hopped up and nestled down in the folds of the towel at once. Vera’s cries drifted off.

“Malcolm, come here,” Lyra said quickly. Both Malcolm and Mary rose from the sofa at once and hurried over. “What sort of animal is her dæmon?!”

“An…African polecat? No. The coloring and shape are all wrong…” Malcolm said.

“No, but it _is_ from Africa,” Mary said decisively. “I _think_ that’s an African civet. A baby one, anyway.”

“ _Yes_!” Malcolm cried, delighted. “It’s definitely a civet!”

“That’s so interesting,” Mary gushed. “It looks both cat-like and mustelid-like, don’t you think? Do you think it’s imitating both Pan and Kirjava?”

“I don’t know. Baby Pantalaimon turned into all sorts of things when Lyra was a baby. What do you think, Asta?”

Malcolm’s dæmon said: “I just think he felt civet-ish.”

Whatever that meant, Will had no idea, but he was as enamored with the little civet as everybody else was. He couldn’t help but feel like he had witnessed the exact moment when his little daughter had had her first real _thought_ and that that was what had brought her dæmon into existence, and that felt extremely humbling and special.

He dried and dressed Vera—Pantalaimon held her dæmon so it wasn’t in the way—and then Will carried Vera and her dæmon over to the sofa and sat with her. Lyra, Malcolm, and Mary joined him, and for a minute or so, they all just watched as Vera and the dæmon breathed together, just as much _one_ as Lyra and Pan were, or Will and Kirjava, or Malcolm and Asta.

“I knew she was clever,” Lyra bragged quietly. “She’s only three days old! That might be the quickest anybody’s dæmon ever appeared!”

“No,” said Pan, “I definitely appeared that soon, too.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just _do_.”

“What’s his name?” Will asked his and Lyra’s dæmons, before Lyra and Pan could get to arguing. “What do we call him?”

Kirjava rubbed against Pantalaimon, purring and watching the baby dæmon with the doting eyes of a mother. Will would’ve liked to have teased her for it, but he couldn’t; he was wrapped around Vera’s finger entirely, too, and everybody knew it.

“Maximus,” Pantalaimon declared.

At first, Will wanted to laugh, but as he looked at the little civet—snoozing with his face resting just under his newborn daughter’s chin—he realized it actually suited the dæmon well.

“Vera and Max,” Lyra said happily. “I like it.”

“Maximus meaning—” Malcolm stopped himself. He and Mary exchanged an intrigued look. “Nevermind.”

“The Scholar double-act is getting tiring,” Lyra complained.

“You’re a scholar, too,” Mary reminded her.

“But not like _you two_ are,” she said. “What are you two looking at each other like that for?”

“Well…it’s just…Kirjava, Pan, you do realize Maximus can be interpreted in Latin as ‘the greatest’,” Malcolm began.

“Yes. We know. That’s why we picked it,” said Pantalaimon lovingly.

“Meaning that, together, Maximus and Vera could be loosely interpreted as ‘the greatest truth’. You’re just _asking_ for a cosmic purpose,” Mary finished.

Will and Lyra exchanged a startled look. Will was thinking of the words Lyra had said after Vera had been placed in her arms for the first time— _“She’s the truest thing I’ve ever known”—_ and how Will had felt the same way, too. He knew she was thinking the same thing.

Uneasily, she said: “Maybe we could name the dæmon something else. What other names did you two like?”

Kirjava wasn’t happy with that idea—Will felt a brief flash of annoyance from her—but she gave it a go anyway.

“We liked Augustino, Arminius, Balendin—”

“I liked Basil, but Kirjava won’t let me name him that,” Pantalaimon complained.

“It’s an _herb_ , Pan.”

“Oh, fine." 

They tried out a few of the other names their dæmons had liked, pairing them with Vera’s name, waiting to see if the little dæmon responded to any of them. But it was too late. Will looked at his daughter’s dæmon and he thought _Max._ It had stuck quickly and firmly, and no matter how hard he tried to train his brain to think of him another way, he couldn’t.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Lyra said briskly. “Names are just names. If he’s a Maximus, he’s a Maximus.”

“He _is_ ,” Kirjava said. She was right.

Everybody turned as the front door opened. Will looked over and smiled at his mum. She was beaming and holding up a camera from Lyra’s world.

“I saw _three cubs_ bending metal to make a little structure to climb and play on,” she greeted, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. Will had never realized his mum was such an adventurer until he’d traveled with her, but he supposed it made sense; she and his father must have traveled together all the time before he was born. “They’re really sentient like people—they talk and they build things—it’s the most wondrous thing!”

“I bet one of the cubs was Aobel,” Lyra said fondly. She shook her head. “She’s always stealing metal. Elaine, come look at Vera, look what happened!”

His mum set the camera down on a table and hurried over towards them. Will didn’t know what she’d been expecting to see, but Max wasn’t it. She balked.

“Is that…? It’s a baby Kir—dæmon?”

Lyra nodded and grinned. “Yes! It’s Vera’s dæmon. His name is Maximus.”

His mum seemed a little uncertain about it, but after a moment or two, she seemed to see what they saw: that Vera and Max were one.

“He’ll grow as Vera does,” Will explained to his mum. “Pan and Kirjava will take care of him.”

Their dæmons got the chance to do just that a little later. Vera woke with a shrill cry—her hungry cry, as Lyra and Will had quickly learned—and Max changed irritably from a civet to a colorful baby lovebird to a spotted baby bunny. Pantalaimon and Kirjava rushed to comfort Max while Lyra took the baby from Will. At first, Vera protested Kirjava scooping Max up, but she settled down quickly when Lyra brought her to nurse.

“They change when they’re young, dæmons do,” Malcolm explained quietly to Will’s mum. Will looked over at her: her eyes had widened as Max changed forms. “They pick one form to stay once they reach maturity.”

Bunny Max snuggled up between Pan and Kirjava, looking as content as Vera did. Kirjava licked the fur on his head, grooming it back from his eyes, and Max changed at once into a tiny kitten version of Kirjava. To Kirjava, this was the utmost flattery: Will felt a flood of pride as Kirjava felt it.

Will looked at Vera—snuggled up to Lyra, happy, healthy, comfortable, her little hand pressed over her mum’s heart as she nursed—and Lyra—chatting easily with his mum about the panserbjørne, her hair tucked behind her ears, a loving fierceness in her eyes that was both new and familiar all at once—and Max—curled against Pantalaimon and Kirjava, as safe and at-home in their embraces as Vera was in Lyra and Will’s—and he felt that everything was right in the world, just as keenly as he knew that, outside of this cottage, it wasn’t. His joy and his sadness were one within him; he felt both intensely, because just as he knew that this moment was one of the most beautiful he’d ever lived through, he knew that it wouldn’t (and couldn’t) last.

But for right now, it was all there was. He had waited his entire life to feel like this: happy, whole, _safe_. He couldn’t let himself waste it worrying about the future. So he wrapped his arm around Lyra, and he rubbed behind Kirjava’s ears, and he smiled warmly at his daughter each and every time she looked over his way. There was nothing better.

 

 


	7. the giggle at a funeral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait-- I've been really sick and I've had to chip away at this chapter bit by bit between fevers :'( thanks for reading!!

Will woke to the sound of snuffling.

His first reaction was worry. He sat straight up in bed, his heart jamming up his throat with panic, and twisted over to look at the cot. He fumbled with the bedside lamp. But his worries were unfounded: when the soft yellow light from the electric lamp fell over his daughter’s face, he saw that she was still deeply asleep and entirely unperturbed. Pantalaimon had flattened himself at the end of the cot so he could cuddle Max and keep an eye on Vera without touching her, and even he and Max were out like lights. Will looked next to Lyra, but she was as deeply asleep as their baby, her dark golden hair fanned over the pillow in waves and her alethiometer resting just beside her face.

“Maybe it was in our dreams,” Kirjava muttered sleepily.

“Maybe,” Will whispered back, but by the time he’d safely placed Lyra’s alethiometer on the bedside table for her, he heard it again: loud, persistent snuffles. Only now that he was awake, he realized where it was coming from.

“The window?” Kirjava questioned, confused. Will painstakingly untangled his legs from Lyra’s and slid bit by bit from the bed. He held his breath the entire time, not wanting to wake her. She was waking every three hours or so to feed Vera, and he didn’t want his paranoia to be the reason she missed out on even one precious second. But she seemed to have a sixth sense for his presence; he felt her hand fly out and smack at his thigh, blindly grasping for purchase.

“Don’t,” she complained into the pillow, clearly still half-asleep.

Will patted her hand consolingly. “I’m not,” he said, as he continued climbing from the bed.

“Liar,” she slurred.

“I’m right beside you, Lyra,” he reassured her—as he stood and walked from the bed. He didn’t hear another complaint from her as he walked over to the window, so he glanced over his shoulder to make sure she’d gone back to sleep, but she hadn’t; she was blindly patting the pillow where she’d left her alethiometer.

“Where’sit?” she mumbled, her words running together.

“Your alethiometer? Bedside table. I didn’t want it to fall off the bed,” Will responded. He stopped in front of the curtained window. He heard the snuffling sound again. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. He knew that someone—or something—was on the other side of the glass, and his every nerve was tingling with instinctual fear because of it.

“Why do you need it?” Will heard Kirjava ask Lyra quietly. “Do you want me to get it for you?” Will guessed Lyra was still deliriously patting her pillow.

“Gonna ask it…why…Will’s lying…” she managed. Will guessed she drifted back off after that.

He turned his entire focus to the window. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and then, against every one of his instincts, he wrenched the curtains back. And at first, his heart jolted, and he impulsively reared his fist back to punch right between the beady black eyes he saw…but then he realized it was a panserbjørn. A smiling panserbjørn. A cub. And…it was waving.

Will stepped forward again, dumbfounded. It was too early for this.

“ _Hi!”_ he heard the cub yell. It was muffled, but still loud, and Will quickly shook his head, glancing pointedly behind himself at the cot. He figured this was the famous Aobel he’d heard so much about. He knew from what he’d heard of her that she wouldn’t be giving up and going away on her own, so he pointed and gestured towards the front of the house.

“ _Door_ ,” he mouthed slowly. She nodded once, still grinning, and turned at once to round the cottage.

Will sighed.

* * *

 

“Shh!” Will greeted. He had planned on stepping out onto the patio to talk with her, but when his still sleep-warm body met a gust of glacial air, he changed his mind and gestured for her to come inside instead. “Whisper.”

Of course, she didn’t listen. “You’re _Will_ ,” she said loudly, and then she looked proud of herself for remembering his name.

“ _Shh_ ,” Will repeated again, vexed. “I’ll send you away if you don’t whisper. _This_ is a whisper, what I’m doing now. Lyra and the baby are asleep.”

“The _baby_?!” Aobel repeated loudly. Kirjava hissed viciously at her. Will glared.

“If you don’t lower your voice I will march you to King Iorek myself, and he won’t be happy! He told you to stay away,” threatened Will.

Aobel narrowed her eyes. “Oh yeah? And how are you going to get me to him?” But she’d lowered her voice to a whisper.

“I’ll _carry you_ ,” said Will darkly. “You’re not that big. I’ve lifted heavier things. Don’t make me carry you—that’ll be humiliating.”

“You couldn’t carry me if your life depended on it,” Aobel scoffed (in a whisper). But Will noticed she didn’t challenge him to try, either. Instead, she walked lightly over to the sofa and climbed up on it. She sat like a human, straight up, her hind legs sticking out. Will nearly laughed out loud at the sight. He had to take a minute. He set a hand over his mouth and breathed through the urge to laugh at the bear.

“What are you doing here? Do you realize how late—or early, I guess—it is?” he demanded.

“I had to wait until Maja was asleep, didn’t I?” she hissed back.

“Maja?”

“My mother.”

Will looked at her incredulously. “Oh, so you’ve snuck out?” Dragging her to Iorek was looking better and better by the minute.

“Yes. I _had_ to. They won’t let me see my friend and she might need me.”

“Vera’s fine.”

“Who’s Vera? I’m talking about my friend Lyra.”

Will was amused now. He decided he wouldn’t tell on her to her dad as long as she kept quiet. “Your friend _Lyra_ is fine.”

“And how do I know that, hmm? I haven’t seen her for _years_.”

“Weeks? I think you mean weeks. Three weeks,” he corrected. “What exactly do you think happened to her?”

Aobel narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I do not _know_ ,” she pronounced clearly, slowly. “But she’s here with all these _males_ —in her _den_ —and it’s not natural. Males shouldn’t be around tiny, brand-new cubs, or brand-new mother bears.”

“Yes, well, we’re humans here, so you needn’t worry. Humans do things differently.”

Aobel huffed loudly. “I _want_ to see my friend.”

“And you can. In…” Will turned and glanced over at the clock near the fireplace. “An hour and forty-five minutes.”

“Oh but that’s _so long_ ,” Aobel groaned, annoyed. “Why can’t I go see her now? I know where she sleeps! She sleeps there in that room.”

“Because she’s sleeping. And if you wake her up, I _swear_ I’ll carry you to King Iorek.” He meant it, too. Aobel could read that in his fierce gaze.

“Fine,” she grumbled, her eyes narrowed. She clearly didn’t like that she couldn’t boss him around. “Do you have any jam?”

“Sorry?”

“Jam. I like the purple kind best.”

“I don’t know. You can go check if you like.” Will stood. He didn’t like being gone from the bedroom this long; it made him feel uneasy. “Listen, you can stay out here and wait for Lyra to wake, and you can eat some jam if you find some, but you _can’t make any noise_. Deal?”

“Where are you going?” she asked, suspicious again.

“Back to bed.”

He headed towards the bedroom.

“ _NO_!” Aobel exclaimed. Will felt her run into the back of his knees. He staggered, caught himself on the doorframe, and then spun around and set a hand over her mouth to try and get her to be quiet. She responded by licking his hand. It did what she’d intended it to: he snatched his hand back and grimaced.

“What’s your problem!?” Will hissed, furious. He held his hand away from his body and glared.

“That’s _Lyra’s_ room!”

Will had to breathe deeply for a few moments to keep from losing his temper. “Aobel,” he finally whispered, his tone short. “I know that. I sleep in there. In the bed. With her. I’m her…I don’t even know what word bears use. Mate? It’s…nice that you’re so protective of your friend. But she wants me in there. I promise. You can ask her yourself when she wakes up.”

“I will!” Aobel hissed back.

“Good. Do that. And _be quiet_!” he ordered. He walked over to the sink and scrubbed his hands thoroughly, not wanting to touch his newborn with bear saliva on his hand. After that, he shot a distrustful look over his shoulder at Aobel, but she was sitting quietly at the table eating jam from the jar with her paw.

He was glad to shut and lock the door, barring the little bear from the bedroom. Thankfully, Lyra and Vera were both still asleep, though Pan popped his head up when Will entered.

“Where were you?” Pan whispered.

Will leaned over the cot to check on Vera. He peered at her tiny form in the dim moonlight and tried to make out the rise and fall of her back. “Aobel showed up.”

“She misses us,” Pantalaimon said knowingly.

Will watched Vera’s small back rise and fall steadily for at least a minute before he was reassured. Now that she was here safe, his new obsessive worry was cot death. He hadn’t even told Lyra anything about it—she had enough to worry about, as well as a birth to recover from, _and_ a lack of sleep, _and_ rampant emotions—but it woke him nearly as often as the baby woke her. He had nightmares about waking up to find Vera still and cold in her cot, and no amount of research he did on the topic soothed him. It didn’t help that his library was severely limited; he only had the texts he’d brought from home, and while he’d packed a good two dozen, nothing he read or reread calmed him.

“She can miss you quieter,” Will finally said. He brushed his fingers lightly against Vera’s smooth forehead to make sure she wasn’t running a temperature – she wasn’t. After peeking at Max—he was still asleep against Pantalaimon’s heart, this time in the form of a puppy—Will lovingly straightened Vera’s socks and then moved to sit carefully on the edge of the bed.

“Do you think somebody will take her?” Pantalaimon asked, and at first, Will thought he meant Aobel.

“Take her? They’d bring her right back,” he muttered.

Pan was confused. “Why?” He realized a moment later. “Oh, not Aobel. I meant Vera.”

Will’s heart seemed to stutter, and it was fitting, as he’d sooner they take his own heart from his chest. “Take her? What do you mean? Who?”

“I just mean…you wake up loads of times every night. And you look at her like you’re afraid you’ll find the cot empty. Do you know something that Lyra and I don’t? Is the Church going to try and kidnap her?”

Max stirred. Pantalaimon froze. He and Will didn’t move or say a word until the little dæmon had settled back down, and then Will said: “She’s just so tiny. I worry.”

“Me too. That’s why I sleep here,” Pan admitted. “Kirjava would, only she’s too big.”

Will glanced over at Kirjava. She was stretched out like a queen on Lyra’s other side, tummy up and all four legs in the air. He snorted. “And she likes room to stretch out far too much.”

“Yeah,” agreed Pan with a laugh. “Anyway, what I mean is that you don’t need to worry ‘cause I’m here with the baby. I’m watching her and I’m watching Maximus. If something were to happen…like if she got ill and she couldn’t breathe or she got a fever…I would know. _Maximus_ would know. He would tell me. That’s what I’m teaching him right now, you know—how to help put up a fuss when Vera needs something. Right now I’m trying to teach him to turn into a skunk when Vera needs changing. Not that she really needs help being noisy…”

Will laughed aloud at that. He felt an overpowering surge of love and admiration for Lyra and Pan, who were taking to motherhood with such grace that it often left him a bit misty-eyed and awed. “Thanks, Pan.”

“It’s my job,” he said proudly, chin held high.

Lyra was full of that same lordly determination when she woke an hour and a half later, roused by the soft alarm on Will’s phone. Will hadn’t been able to do more than doze, too hyperaware of the cub in the kitchen and waiting on edge to see if she’d start making noise again, so he was awake as soon as she groaned and stretched.

“I’m up…I’m up…” she said drowsily. “Baby. Get?”

“Baby. Yes.”

She smacked him gently with the back of her hand. He laughed. Before he could get up to retrieve Vera, Lyra rolled over towards him and rested her forehead against his shoulder. Her hand slid up his stomach and chest so her palm could rest over his heart. He took her hand in his and brought it up to his lips, his chest filling with warmth and affection. She kissed his shoulder right after he kissed her hand. He smiled up into the darkness.

“You can snooze a few more minutes, you know,” he told her. “She’ll be okay. She’s gaining weight well.”

“No,” Lyra said at once. Will could feel her eyes on him, and when he turned to look down at her, she looked proud and haughty. “They’re supposed to eat every two to three hours. All those books say that. _You_ said that.”

“And it’s true. But a few minutes here or there aren’t a huge deal.”

“It _is_ a huge deal,” she said stubbornly. She scooted up to sit, and when she winced briefly, Will felt a sting of concern. She leaned against the headboard and ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it back out of her face. “I’m doing this the right way. All of it.”

She didn’t say _I’m doing this the way my mum didn’t_ , but Will heard that anyway. She had decided rather quickly that whatever Mrs. Coulter couldn’t be bothered to do was probably the right thing to do. So far, that way of thinking had been more or less directly in line with all the advice in Will’s medical texts, but he was worried she was going to burn herself out. She hadn’t stepped from the cottage once since Vera was born—she didn’t want to leave her and it was too cold outside for Vera to comfortably be out there—and she only slept but two hours at a time. She said everything was going well and that she was very happy anytime he asked, with a no-nonsense sort of tone that told Will she thought it was pointless for him to even question it, but he kept track of her every mood change despite it. He tried not to hover, though.

He knew now from one last look at her obstinate expression that she had fully and totally made up her mind, so he slid from the bed and went to retrieve Vera. She was still so young that she had to be woken for feedings if she didn’t wake herself. She sometimes did, but this stretch of the night was always the hardest part; keeping her awake was often a two-person job.

Pantalaimon had to nudge Max—who was still a large-breed puppy—a few times before he’d change into a smaller form. Pantalaimon couldn’t carry him when he was that large, and Will couldn’t leave Max behind in the cot or else both he and Vera would put up an ungodly fuss. Max changed into a baby mouse, and as soon as Pantalaimon gently lifted him by the back of the neck, Will reached into the cot and lifted Vera. She began shrieking her protest at being disturbed, her voice shrill and loud in Will’s ear as he cradled her to his chest, and that anger only doubled as he changed her nappy. But he rubbed her back gently afterwards and walked a few circles around the room until she calmed.

As soon as she was less angry, Will brought Vera over to the bed. He sat beside Lyra and held Vera carefully upright—one hand beneath her bottom, the other cupping the back of her head to support her neck—as Lyra undid her top, trying to keep Vera alert so she wouldn’t fall asleep again. Pantalaimon had settled Max between him and Kirjava—only a foot or so from Vera—and Kirjava was gently nosing Max to try and keep him awake.

“Vera, Vera, Vera…” Will sang her name in varying octaves, trying to keep her interested, and it partially worked. She responded to the sound of his voice and sought his face with her eyes. He smiled at her. “Let’s keep awake, yeah? Just for a bit. I know…I’m tired, Max is tired, Mummy’s tired, Pan’s tired, Kirjava’s tired...we’re all tired…just a little while longer and then we can all sleep again…”

Remarkably, she stayed alert while he spoke to her, her eyes traveling all over his face as he did.

“Okay,” he said to her, after an insistent nudge from Lyra. “Here we go. Mummy’s ready for you. _Don’t fall asleep_ , okay?”

But before he could pass her to Lyra, something hard crashed into the door, making Vera startle in his hands and collapse into alarmed sobs. At his side, Lyra swore.

“That better be the CCD out there because I’m going to kill them, whoever they are. I’ve leaked like a rubbish tap—I en’t—I’m not changing again, I don’t even have anything clean left at this point—hand me that towel and then go kill them.”

Half-delirious with sleep loss, Lyra mumbled a very colorful suggestion on how Will might slaughter the supposed CCD members behind the door. He was so startled by it that he had to press his lips together to keep from laughing. Will lay Vera carefully on his legs and set a hand on her tummy, holding her securely in place, and leaned over to grab one of the folded towels from the bedside table. He passed it over to Lyra. He gently swept her hair over her shoulders for her while she mopped at her chest and her top.  

“En’t— _ugh,_ I can’t think properly—aren’t you gonna—going to—” she made a stabbing sort of gesture and pointed at the door.

“It’s Aobel,” Will admitted irritably. “She showed up in the middle of the night.”

“Ah,” she muttered. She draped the towel over her shoulder and reached again for Vera. Will quickly handed her over before they had another mini-crisis. “Yeah, that does sound like Aobel.”

He waited until both baby and mother were situated, and then he asked: “Do you _want_ me to let her in? Because I’ll send her away if not. I’ve got no problem marching her straight to Iorek or her mum.”

“No, it’s fine,” she said, after a brief pause. “She’s just worried. I _told_ Iorek they ought to let her visit during the day or else she’d end up sneaking out...”

“She’s very suspicious about you living in this _den_ with all these _males_ ,” Will said. Lyra laughed. It was tired-sounding, but it made Will beam anyway just to have made her laugh when she was so irritated.  

“So she’s come to rescue me. I see. Well, go on, let her in so she can growl and stamp and do whatever it is she feels she needs to do.”

Will didn’t _want_ her to growl—it would startle Vera again—but if Lyra wanted him to let her in the room, he’d let her in the room. He climbed yawning from the bed and walked over to unlock the door. As soon as he’d pulled it open, Aobel rolled in, her fur bristled with concern.

“Lyra? Where’s Lyra—Lyra!”

She brushed past Will and bolted over towards the bed. To Will’s chagrin, she climbed right up on top of the covers, tracking in all sorts of bacteria—Will didn’t even want to think about it. She rushed at Lyra, and Will’s heart stuttered and stopped in his chest because he thought she was going to throw herself on Lyra, and Vera was there, and she’d get squashed—but Aobel noticed Vera’s dark hair at the last moment. She froze in place. Her eyes widened.

“Cub,” she said dumbly, stunned into silence.

Will hurried over to sit at Lyra’s side, in case he needed to rein the cub in. But she sat down slowly, her paw extended cautiously, her eyes on what she could see of Vera.

“Hi, Aobel,” Lyra said. “I see you found your way here.”

“Yes! Because people were hiding you! And I was worried! And…” she leaned in closer to Lyra after shooting a sideways look at Will. “ _Do you want these males in here?”_

Lyra fell into laughter at once. It shook her entire body, and Vera pulled back for a moment and looked up at her mum almost with wonder.

“Yeah, Aobel. I do.”

“Are you _sure_?” Aobel pressed.

“Positive. Will’s the baby’s father, Aobel. Remember, we talked about this. How human dads are just as much the parent as human mums.”

“I didn’t believe you and I’m still not sure I do. It’s too odd.”

“Well, you don’t have to understand it, but you do need to believe me.”

Aobel shuffled closer. Lyra patted her other side. “Come here. Have you managed to make any of your armor yet? I hear you’ve been stealing scrap metal left and right.”

Aobel happily went to sit cuddled up to Lyra’s side. Will had some generous reservations about what sort of germs Aobel probably had in her fur, but she wasn’t touching the baby, so he guessed it was okay. He listened to Aobel chatter on and on about her metal. Vera seemed to enjoy watching her mother talk: her eyes stayed trained on Lyra’s face as she spoke and laughed, and she only drifted off a couple times, but both times a quick nudge from Kirjava to Max woke her. Will, despite his initial irritation with Aobel, was content to sit on Lyra’s other side and listen to the two chat. He had to admit that Aobel was entertaining, and he could have fallen in love with Lyra all over again as he watched her laugh brightly at the cub’s jokes, her tired, pale eyes sparkling, her hair tumbling freely over her bared shoulder, their little daughter watching her with a look that communicated quite clearly that, to her, Lyra was the entire world and everything in it.

“The cub isn’t old enough to play,” Aobel realized, turning her focus to Vera now that she’d given Lyra a day-by-day recount of the time they’d been apart. “When can I play with her?”

“Oh, I dunno, Aobel,” Lyra said tiredly. She yawned deeply a moment later. She nearly nodded off after switching Vera to her other side. Will scooted closer in case he needed to take Vera.

“Maybe in a week,” Aobel said thoughtfully.

“She won’t be much bigger at all in a week, or much fun to play with,” Lyra said, her eyes still closed.

“I can wait. I like her, Lyra.” She said it with a bit of surprise, as if she’d been trying to decide the entire time what she thought of Vera. Will—who had been drowned with love from the first moment he saw his child—felt offended that somebody could look at Vera and _not_ think she was the most wonderful thing alive.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I like her hair…” before Will could say a thing, Aobel reached her paw out and tentatively touched Vera’s fine dark hair with the dirty pads of her paws. Will was internally cringing. “It’s dark—like a walrus,” Aobel said decisively.

This time, Will laughed alongside Lyra, the same tired, affectionate sound. They turned and sought each other’s eyes in the same moment. Their smile was soft and amused.

“It’s Will’s hair, see?” Lyra said. She reached up and ran her fingers softly through his hair. He felt his scalp tingle pleasantly, and his heart swelled. His reverence for his tiny daughter was such that he felt a tremendous surge of pride any time her resemblance to him was mentioned.

“Yes.” Aobel looked at Will. “You have a walrus head, too.”

“Thanks,” said Will flatly. Lyra laughed harder than she had the entire night at that.

For the next couple of minutes, Aobel peered curiously at Vera as she nursed. Will braced himself for whatever was about to come out of the cub’s mouth next.

“I think bears are better mums than humans because bear mums have got _four_ milk places…” and so began Aobel’s longwinded breakdown on every reason why bears were superior to humans. Will and Lyra half-listened, nodding and commenting every now and then, both drifting halfway between sleep some of the time. Vera fell asleep near the end of her feed and slept deeply in Lyra’s arms, and she and Will were too exhausted to try and move her, but it’s not as if they could’ve slept, anyway. Finally, realizing Lyra wasn’t going to send her away, Will did.

“Aobel,” he said, interrupting her spiel on why humans should probably teach their cubs to hunt when they were eight months old, too, “you need to go back to your mum now.”

“Already?”

“It’s been hours,” he pointed out.

“Has it?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Goodbye, Aobel.”

He thought she might argue, but something in his gaze intimidated her enough that she scrambled from the bed. Lyra had dozed off a few minutes before, and Will shook his head once at Aobel when she started to yell at her to tell her goodbye.

“Don’t wake her. You’ll see her soon.”

The cub sighed and stamped off. Will began the arduous process of trying to remove Vera from Lyra’s arms without waking either of them. Lyra fought him on it in her sleep, tightening her arms and refusing to relent, until Will whispered: “It’s me, Lyra,” and then she handed Vera to him willingly.

Pantalaimon and Max were curled up together and deeply asleep. Will didn’t want to wake either, but Kirjava couldn’t exactly carry them to the cot, so he pulled Vera’s cot over so it was flush against the side of the bed, so that her connection with Max wouldn’t pull. He held his breath as he gingerly set her down. He didn’t move for at least two minutes. When he felt confident that both Vera and Lyra were sound asleep, he _finally_ let himself lie down. He closed his eyes and turned over onto his side so he was closer to Lyra. He had just begun to drift off when the soft alarm on his phone went off again. His stomach dropped to his toes. He rolled over and quickly shut it off because he didn’t think Lyra needed to wake up again when she’d literally only fallen asleep maybe twenty minutes prior, but it was too late: Max, a baby duck now, stirred and gave a soft _quack_ , and then Vera began wailing, and before Will could jump to his feet, Lyra was sitting up at his side.

“How was that three hours?” she asked. Her voice was soft, but Will could hear tearful frustration lurking below it.

“Time flies when you’re having your entire species insulted by an armored bear during the time you’re meant to sleeping.” Will sat up and turned, throwing his legs over the side of the bed so he could stand. “Go back to sleep, I’ve got her.”

“No,” she argued. “That’s stupid. You need to sleep, too.”

“And you don’t?”

“No—I need to feed her.”

She looked so tired that his heart ached for her. He felt his eyes sting. He stared at the stubborn tilt of her chin, the deep shadows beneath her eyes, the paleness painting her cheeks. He didn’t want to argue with her—he could tell she was emotionally on the brink thanks to her exhaustion—but he didn’t think she was treating herself fairly.

“I can give her a bottle, Lyra, it’s really okay. Listen to me. I’m a doctor and I say it’s _okay_.”

“And I’m her mum and I say that I’m fine and I feel really well-rested, and good, and great, and well-rested.”

He wanted to point out that she’d just repeated herself twice, but he knew that probably wouldn’t be a very smart thing to do. He was balancing between wanting to help her and not wanting to alienate her. If he nagged her over and over again she might feel like he was her enemy rather than her partner, like he was implying he knew more about being a mum than she did, and he knew that would offend her, but he felt like she was pushing herself too hard. And on top of that, he felt a bit useless, and that was a difficult feeling for him to manage. He wasn't used to it. All his life, he'd been the one in charge of things, the one taking care of people. He had never been useless. But right now, he didn’t feel like he could contribute an equal share, and that made the burden harder on Lyra, and that wasn’t what he’d ever wanted. Not at the start and not now.

“I wish you’d sleep, even if only for an hour.” He should have made Aobel leave. He knew how little time Lyra got to sleep; why hadn’t he forced her from the cottage? Regret and guilt tangled around his heart like vines.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, and he could tell she was getting annoyed now. Vera’s cries were only getting louder. “But I do need a wee first.”

He scrambled to help in some way. “I’ve got her. Go on.” He stood from the bed and glanced over his shoulder, prepared to call for Kirjava, but she was already stretching and heading towards him.

Kirjava leaned into the cot and gently picked up ermine-Max by the back of his neck. He was spitting and putting up as much fuss as Vera, who was red in the face and hollering like her life depended on it. Will lifted and cradled Vera close to his chest and walked around and around the room as she sobbed, Kirjava carrying Max around and following after Will. He spoke to Vera, telling her that everything was okay at first, and then just talking for the sake of talking. He softly explained the specific uses for each different type of antibiotic. Vera fell still about the time he started talking about macrolides; she lay sleepily in his arms, looking up at his face with her lips parted and her eyes wide. Her cheeks were flushed a deep pink from all her crying and they shone underneath a film of tears. Will leaned down to kiss her forehead, but when he stopped speaking, she gave a gasping cry, so he quickly picked back up with fluoroquinolones.

When he felt Lyra’s eyes on him, he glanced around to see her leaning against the doorway, a soft smile in place. He couldn’t help but smile back at her. He passed her Vera when she reached for her, though her arms were trembling with exhaustion, and he felt reluctant. Kirjava refused to let Pantalaimon take Max and instead walked over with him to stand by Lyra, making it clear that she was going with her to the sitting room.

“C’mon, Vera,” Lyra whispered gently. She cradled her close and pressed her face against Vera’s hair to kiss her softly. At once, Vera squirmed closer to her and gave an impatient, protesting grunt. Despite Will’s worry and Lyra’s fatigue, they both laughed at her.

“I’m taking her in the sitting room. My arms are tired; I want to sit in the armchair so I can use the armrests.”

He almost offered to carry Vera into the sitting room for her but caught himself. Again, he struggled with trying to be helpful while also not undermining her ability.

“I’ll come with you,” he said finally. She opened her lips to protest, but he knew what she’d say and he said: “I can sleep on the sofa.” _Don’t worry about_ me _._

He had really meant to _pretend_ to be asleep. He wanted to be available in case she needed him to get her anything, so she wouldn’t have to try and stumble around the cottage one-handed while she was so exhausted. But after ten minutes of lying on the sofa with his eyes shut, he really did drift off.

* * *

 

Lyra felt a soft hand on her shoulder.

“Lyra,” Elaine whispered.

She had been drifting so pleasantly between deep sleep and consciousness. At Elaine’s touch, though, she suddenly remembered exactly where she was, and she gasped awake with a start. Her heart sank to her toes. She had been feeding Vera and she’d fallen asleep and probably she’d dropped her and—

But her arms were still up, her elbows perched on the armrests, Vera snuggled to her chest. She was as deeply asleep as Lyra had nearly been. With her heart pounding, Lyra looked up at Will’s mum.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted at once, but as soon as she said it, she was confused as to why she had. It had been the first and only words ready to fly from her lips.

Elaine frowned. “What on earth are you sorry for, dear?”

To this, Lyra had no answer. She felt disoriented, and her eyelids kept drifting shut despite her intentions.

“I just wanted to tell you I was going to take her so you could sleep,” Elaine whispered. “I wanted to make sure that was okay.”

It was more than okay. Vera was fed, and happy, and sleepy, and now Lyra could sleep—though she truly wasn’t having much choice in the matter presently.

“Yes, please,” she mumbled, the words falling clumsily from her tired lips. Her head was already lolling to the side within seconds of her eyes closing. She felt Elaine scoop Vera up, and then she felt her refasten her top for her, and Lyra’s sleep-deprivation had put such strain on her emotions that just that one kind, considerate gesture made her throat narrow. Was she asleep? Was she awake? Could she cry in her sleep over something happening when she was awake? Had it even happened at all? She didn’t know, and soon, she wasn’t conscious of anything—and it was bliss.

Until she was—and it was frustrated misery. She felt as if she’d only _just_ drifted off when she heard Vera’s distinctive cry, even before the alarm on Will’s phone had gone off, even _before_ the three hours were up.

For the first time, in her selfish, deadened state, she considered ignoring her child. She felt a genuine flash of irritation at the baby. It was fleeting and automatic—and it terrified her enough to make her scramble up from the chair, so fast that her head felt heavy and her vision went black for a moment, and she stumbled forward.

Two hands caught her upper arms at once.

“Lyra?” Malcolm whispered urgently. “Have you fainted?”

“No—I just stood up too fast—I’m okay,” she managed, but her head was still spinning around and around and around. And she could still feel her heart aching with fear and guilt. She felt sick from it. When she was finally able to open her eyes, she was relieved to see Will was still asleep on the sofa. She looked up at Malcolm’s face desperately. “Please don’t tell Will that I fell.”

She was keeping things from him now? That was news to her, but as soon as the words fell from her mouth, she knew it was right. He was worried about her enough as it was. He didn’t need to know she was dizzy. (Still—more guilt on top of guilt on top of guilt.)

Malcolm clearly didn’t like that request. He observed her uneasily. “What? Why not?”

“Just ‘cause,” she said, her words still thick with exhaustion. She sought her crying baby and found her in Mary’s arms. Mary looked absolutely helpless; she was holding Vera tentatively, her wide eyes on the wailing infant, uncertainty lining every inch of her expression. She crumbled with relief when Lyra approached her.

“Thank God,” she said at once. “I have no idea what to do. I don’t know.”

Lyra dredged up a smile for Mary and reached for Vera. She felt the most confusing tangle of relief and dread: she was glad to have her baby in her arms again—it still felt so wrong to have her far at all, and the smell of her brought forth a fierce wave of love and joy—but she knew she’d be stuck in a chair for another half-hour at least while she nursed, and she would need to stay awake, and at that moment in time, staying awake felt brutally impossible. Her future seemed an endless stretch of feeding after feeding, and the problem wasn’t the feedings themselves: Lyra didn’t mind those, and in fact, there were things she rather liked about them. The problem was that she needed sleep—genuine, proper sleep, the kind she had never appreciated fully until she was unable to grasp it.

Vera nuzzled into her embrace and stopped crying at once. It was almost as if she were saying, clear as day ‘ _finally. It took you long enough.’_ Lyra made sure Max—a tiny baby bluebird now—was secure where he was cuddled near Vera’s neck, and then she carried them into the bedroom, Pantalaimon weaving behind her. She was much more comfortable in the armchair, but she could still feel Malcolm’s concerned eyes, and she was certain that if anybody asked her if she was okay, she would snap. She didn’t want to yell at him (or anyone here). She loved them all terribly, and they had all done so much for her, so she’d rather lock herself away in the bedroom than scream at them for things that weren’t even their fault.

Lyra fought so hard to keep herself awake that she could have cried with frustration. It was dangerous to fall asleep with the baby in her arms—she could smother her by accident, or drop her, or the baby could fall onto the bed and suffocate against the mattress—but having her sweet, cuddly baby warm in her arms only lulled her closer to sleep. She talked nonstop to Vera to try to keep herself as alert as possible, but even that wasn’t very alert. She wasn’t asleep, but she wasn’t exactly awake either. (And all the while, the memory of that brief annoyance she'd felt haunted her. Part of her wondered...was that how Mrs. Coulter had felt about her: irritated? Was that part of the reason she'd cast her away? Was Lyra doomed to do the same to Vera? Would her brief annoyance grow into constant annoyance-- would she repeat history? The thought was too painful; she had to stop thinking about it.)

“And then your dad got sort of thrown and so I jumped on the man’s back to stop him from getting the knife but he threw me off and then your dad—he got up—and he was kicking and kicking that man as angry and fierce and singleminded as a person could get and the man fell and then your dad got the knife from him but it was all wrong ‘cause his fingers had gotten cut off in the process only he didn’t notice yet and the man turned and he ran from your dad and then we saw how badly his hand was hurt and it…”

Lyra’s nonsensical stream of words halted to a stop as the doorknob turned. Vera cooed softly at her breast, and Lyra felt deliriously that she was asking Lyra: _well, what happened next?_ But Lyra didn’t want anybody but Vera hearing how tired she was, so she kept her lips pressed together as somebody stepped in.

At once, she felt her heart jolt, and she sat straight up. Recognition surged through her.

“Serafina!” she said, surprised, pleased. She hadn’t seen Serafina since three days after Vera was born; last she’d heard—through another witch—Serafina was in England with Dame Hannah and wouldn’t be back for a spell.

“You look horrid,” Serafina greeted. Lyra worked up the energy required to scowl in response. “Are you sleeping at all?”

“As much as I can,” Lyra said shortly. “You’re back sooner than I thought. How’s Dame Hannah?”

“Fine. Lyra, we need to talk.”

“Ah,” said Lyra. She slowly leaned back against the headboard. Weariness packed down and condensed her physical exhaustion. Suddenly, it was all she could do to keep her eyelids up. “Right.”

Her eyes shut. Seconds later, the bed shifted as Serafina sat.

“I was stopped by the CCD as I flew in. They didn’t give me much trouble—they’re only watching to see if _you_ try to leave—but they did give me a letter to give to Iorek. I went straight to him before I came here and delivered it. The Church is requesting a meeting with him. And with you.”

Lyra didn’t know what to think of that. She felt nothing, really. “Okay.”

“They say they want to ‘broker a solution agreeable to both parties’. I suppose you being one and the Church being the other. They’re requesting that Iorek allow them passage into the main settlement for this meeting…” there was an unnatural pause in Serafina’s sentence as if she’d suddenly thought twice about saying what she’d planned on saying, but then she continued on anyway. “They want the baby there, too.”

 _That_ punctured Lyra’s haze. “No!” she cried, and she clutched her child closer to her. Vera seemed to sense her unease: she pulled back and looked up at Lyra with wide, pale eyes, her gaze searching. Lyra leaned over her and kissed her small, fragile features, her little hands. She felt a resurgence of guilt for the way she’d behaved earlier, and now, gazing at her precious child, she couldn’t remember how she had ever felt annoyed with her.

“Of course not. They stressed that it would be easier to find equitable terms if the child were present—so both sides were equally informed, whatever that means—but Iorek and I both knew that would never happen.”

They were right. “I’d sooner cut my own hand off. I’m not having my baby anywhere near them. Ever.”

“And so we just must decide whether or not you want to meet with them. Iorek is leaving it up to you. If you agree to it, he’ll meet with them, too. If you send them away, it will call for attack if anybody steps onto Svalbard.”

Lyra was too exhausted to think through the proposition. Her mind churned with a dozen different half-thoughts that she couldn’t seem to focus on long enough to articulate them. She felt uneasy about it, but it wasn’t for her own safety: she knew she’d be safe at Iorek’s side. She was worried about Vera. What if it were all a ploy just to get the Church access to Svalbard (to the main settlement, to the cottage, to Vera?). What if, while she and Iorek were in a “meeting”, other members of the CCD found her cottage and they took Vera? They had asked Lyra to bring the baby along, sure, but certainly they would have known she’d never say yes…

“I need to ask my alethiometer about it before I decide,” she said, and as she did, she felt a wave of panic and sorrow, for when would she have time to do that? She would just have to figure it out.

“I must admit I’m curious about what sort of ‘solution’ they think the two of you can come up with,” admitted Serafina. “Can I hold her? Is she done?”

Lyra had been staring blankly at the wall, her mind twisting and turning with thoughts and with vertigo. She looked down at Vera and nodded automatically. She was lying contently in Lyra’s arms now, staring up at her mum.

“Yeah, I think so. Here,” Lyra handed Vera off to Serafina. As soon as the baby was gone from her arms, she felt her tiredness peak. She needed to rush off and find her alethiometer…but before she could move from the bed, she was asleep against Serafina’s arm.

* * *

 

Again: Vera’s cries, before the alarm. Again: Lyra’s tearful exhaustion, her brief flash of annoyance. Again: her suffocating guilt.

This time, she had been snoozing in the bed, and Vera was in her cot. Pantalaimon lay weakly on the edge of the bed and peered into the cot with dismay at lion cub Max.

“You’re going to have to change,” he snapped. “Do I look like I can carry a lion cub around?”

Max gave a tiny inept roar, though Lyra was sure he was more cross about the hunger Vera was feeling than Pantalaimon’s attitude.

“Go on—change. Change into something tiny,” Pantalaimon urged. Max roared again while Vera sobbed. “The sooner you change the sooner we can pick you both up.”

Finally, after what felt like an excruciatingly long amount of time, Max changed into a baby badger. Pantalaimon had been hoping for something lighter, like a baby mouse; Lyra felt _his_ surge of irritation. They looked at each other. Lyra sensed complete understanding: he felt just as bad about his annoyance as Lyra did, but he couldn’t deny that he felt it any more than she could. And she was so deeply ashamed of it that Pantalaimon was the only one who would ever know about it; she couldn’t imagine herself telling Will, or Mary, or Elaine that—in that moment— she considered ignoring her baby, that she felt resentment towards her for waking her so much. She couldn’t say those words without gasping from sobs.

“We’re just so tired,” Pan whispered. “I never knew it would be this hard.”

“Me neither,” she admitted. If she were being honest with herself, this never-ending lack of sleep thing was much worse than actually birthing her child had been. “But the books say it gets better. Just a little while longer…then she’ll eat less and we can sleep more.”

She carried her into the living room because she didn’t trust herself to stay awake alone in the bed. Will and Malcolm were cooking something, but they turned and smiled at Lyra when she stepped out of the bedroom. Vera was quiet now, anticipating her feeding, her face pressed impatiently against her mother’s top.

“She’s got to be going through a growth spurt,” Will said, eying their hungry child.

Lyra nodded once, too tired to respond with more than that. It wasn’t until she was settled in the chair that she remembered the news Serafina had brought. It felt like both ages ago and no time at all since Serafina had been sitting beside her, so when Lyra looked around the sitting room and found her missing, she felt confused.

“Where’s Serafina?” she asked. And then, uncertainly, a horrible thought occurring to Lyra: “She…she _was_ here? Right?”

Malcolm thought the question was funny. Will didn’t. He set the spoon in his hand down at once and walked over to Lyra. He kneeled in front of her and reached up, setting his palm on her forehead. She shrugged out of his touch.

“I en’t ill,” she scoffed. A couple seconds passed. “Not. I’m not,” she corrected automatically. Her heart felt heavy. “She…wasn’t?”

“No, she was. She’s talking with Iorek right now. I’m just worried that you _think_ you might have hallucinated it. Have you been feeling confused? Dizzy? When’s the last time you ate?”

With a flash of alarm, she realized she couldn’t remember. Without a genuine nighttime, every day ran together.

“I…I had…” she found it difficult to think. “I haven’t eaten today, I guess.”

Will stood, his lips pressed into a thin, unhappy line.

“You guess.”

“Right. I guess. I dunno, Will.”

For a second, she thought he’d say something else, but after another long look at her, he turned and headed back to the stove.

“How about an omelet?” he offered, lifting a skillet onto the hob. “Poly brought eggs.”

Lyra’s stomach rumbled at once. “Okay, yeah.”

She fed and burped Vera, and by the time she was done, Mary and Elaine had returned from wherever they’d been. Elaine was glad to take Vera, and Lyra was glad to rest her arms. She sat at the table and ate omelet with Will like a proper human. It was so bizarre to her that she kept turning around and looking over at Vera, as if expecting her to begin shrieking at any moment, but Elaine was singing softly to her and she looked incredibly content.

“Did Serafina…” Lyra trailed off and looked up at Will. A slight furrow of his dark brows was the only indication Lyra got to his stress.

“Yes. What do you think about it?” he asked.

At once: “I en’t taking my child in there with _them_ …not. I’m not.” It was a good thing Dame Hannah wasn’t here. She’d think her extensive work educating Lyra had ultimately been for naught. Faced with bone-deep fatigue, Lyra found herself reverting to her old speech patterns more and more.

“No,” Will agreed, his eyes flashing darkly. Lyra felt a swell of love for him and his fierceness. It made her feel warm and safe, even with the Church breathing down their necks. “Vera won’t be anywhere near them.”

“I dunno if I’ll go. I’m worried it’s a trick.”

He frowned. “A trick?”

“Yeah, like they say ‘bring the baby’ knowing I’ll never bring the baby so that I think I’ve got the upper hand but really they’ll be waiting to storm the cottage and take her,” she explained. She yawned so hard her hand trembled and the bit of omelet slipped of her fork. She rubbed her eyes and tried her hardest to keep her mind ordered. “I need to ask my alethiometer,” she said.

“Want me to get it?” offered Will.

She really wanted to sleep again. Now was the only time she’d get to—when Vera was sleeping. But finding out the Church’s motives and plans was more important. She had to be properly informed before she made her decision on whether or not she’d meet with the Church.

“I’ll do it,” Kirjava offered at once, before Lyra could answer Will. She gently stood up from where she’d been curled up with Max—a baby parrot now—and fled to the bedroom, returning quickly with Lyra’s alethiometer.

“I’ll need my books,” Lyra said, with the intention of getting them herself, but Will stood before she could and retrieved them. He seemed eager to do anything he could to help her. She supposed for Will—who had been in charge of things and taken care of everybody from the time he was seven—it was very hard for him to see Lyra struggling with something he _couldn’t_ help with.

She’d thought her sleep deprivation would make reading the alethiometer harder, and she was right. It took her twice as long to piece together things she felt confident she could’ve made sense of easily before. She struggled every minute of the process, and her frustration made her feel weepy, but she kept a careful grasp on herself. She felt that if she cried, she’d never stop.

Her first question had been _what does the Church want from the meeting_?

She spent three hours piecing together the vague answer: _A solution that doesn’t involve battle. They think they will lose if it comes to that. They want an agreement from you that you will enroll the child in religious education as soon as she is four and keep her there for the duration of her childhood. In exchange, they will leave her alone._

By the time she’d learned that much, Vera was up and wailing. Lyra spent a long while trying to figure out how to hold both Vera and her alethiometer, and she finally _did_ , but it was slow, clumsy work, and she dropped her alethiometer every time she tried to turn the wheels.

“What if I turn the wheels for you? And hold it where you can see?” offered Will.

Lyra didn’t see why not. He had been washing the dishes, but he left that job to his mum and came over to sit beside her. She told him what symbols to turn to and watched each movement of each hand, trying her hardest to focus totally on the alethiometer.

 _Should I bring Vera?_ She asked.

 _No,_ it told her at once, and she had anticipated that much. The rest of the answer required her to pore through her books carefully for the next half-hour. _They will take her if you bring her there. They know quick abduction would be the only way to strike and make it back out alive; nobody has had time to amass an army, after all, not even your side. But they do not think you will fall into this trap, and so they are not relying on it._

They were right. Lyra was so absorbed now in finding out more that she hardly remembered the rest of Vera’s feeding. She handed her off to Will as soon as she was done and pulled the alethiometer from his hands without a word, sinking back into her work. It was getting easier and easier the longer she worked at it; maybe she’d just been out of practice.

_And should I meet with them?_

Easier, now: _Yes. But you will not agree to their plan._

Of course not. _Then why should I even bother? What sort of compromise could we ever make?_

This answer took her a bit longer. She flipped through _Alethiometer Sequences and Patterns_ and filled an entire page with writing trying to decipher its last combination. When the answer finally became clear, she recoiled. _It’s not about a compromise. It’s about a defeat. You need to tell them that the baby died._

Lyra was a bit frenzied now. Her fingers trembled as she twisted the wheels. _And that will get us freedom?_

_For some time._

She asked: _But how can I trick them? Wouldn’t their alethiometrist have already told them the baby is here and alive?_

The answer was so vague and confusing that Lyra second-guessed her decoding of it. Finally, after getting the same answer three times, she had to accept it. It answered: _You can trick them by allowing yourself to feel it. Their alethiometrist has not yet figured out that the baby has been born yet. The last the Church heard, your pregnancy was progressing well, and your due date was late March. They assume the baby is here because of that, but have yet to receive confirmation. There is room to deceive them. But you must not run from it._

Further questioning told her it meant that she had to lie with more conviction than she ever had before. Her alethiometer told her she’d shy away from it, and she knew it was right: even now, the brief thought of her baby…she shied away from the mere idea instinctively. To act it convincingly, she’d have to feel it.

There was one more thing it said, too. _In order for it to work, their alethiometrist must die. Where he is found, there must be a false reading written in his own handwriting confirming the death of your child._

This made more sense, but it was trickier. _How do I make that happen?_

The answer was immediate. _Witches._

Lyra leaned back in her chair and bit her lip as she puzzled over these revelations. Her head was full to the brim with information; it gave her a headache. And as soon as she sank from her alethiometer trance, her exhaustion slammed back into her, unrelenting and debilitating. She set her elbow on the tabletop and let her face fall into her open hand, her eyes passing over all the words she’d written as she’d deciphered the symbols, trying to decide what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it.

“That looks complicated,” she heard Elaine said. She glanced to the side and smiled at her.

“A bit,” she agreed. She rubbed her forehead against her hand. Pantalaimon leapt up into her lap and curled up into a tight ball. “I’m tired.”

“You should sleep,” Elaine said at once. “Will’s got Vera. Go lay on the sofa. I’ll get you a blanket.”

“I really should keep working on this,” Lyra said, but she wanted to take up Elaine’s offer more than anything.

“It looks like you’ve done plenty,” Elaine said firmly. She set a soft hand on Lyra’s shoulder. “Come on, dear. A nap would do you good. I can tell how tired you are.”

Lyra was certain she looked dead on her feet. She _felt_ dead on her feet and had for weeks. She found herself following Elaine’s touch as Elaine pulled on her hand gently. She let Will’s mum lead her over to the sofa. She lay on it and—for one of the first times in her life—she had a mother drape a blanket over her, tucking it around her feet so she wouldn’t get chilly, smoothing her hair back from her face before she slept. Lyra felt such tenderness for her that it surprised her, as if her entire life she’d only been waiting for someone to pour the love a child has for their mother into. She fell asleep quickly, Pan curled up near her neck, and she slept for what felt like seconds, and then she was jarred from her dreamless sleep—but not by her daughter.

“Hello, I—oh, she’s sleeping.” Serafina adjusted her voice to a softer tone. “Where’s Will?”

“Bedroom. He’s watching over Vera. Mary and Malcolm went on a walk.”

“Ah,” whispered Serafina. “How’s Vera doing?”

“She’s wonderful. And that little dæmon of hers is so funny. He was a baby Chinese water deer today! I didn’t even know what one of those was. Are they always that clever?”

Serafina laughed quietly. “No, she’s certainly advanced for her age. But then again, so was her mum, as Malcolm says.”

“And her dad,” Elaine added proudly. “He was a clever little baby.”

“And a clever kid,” agreed Serafina. “I see Lyra’s alethiometer is out. Was she using it?”

“For ages. I’m a bit worried about her…she’s so tired.”

“These first weeks are exhausting. I remember them well.”

“Me too, but I didn’t have to worry about a religious organization murdering my baby on top of the exhaustion,” Elaine pointed out softly.

“She’s more resilient than she looks. You wouldn’t believe the things she’s been through. And now, I fear, she soon has something else to endure.”

“What…?”

“The Church is getting impatient. They’re demanding an answer from Iorek on whether or not Lyra will meet with them. They say they need adequate time to schedule travel here for those members of the Church who wish to be in attendance.”

“Oh,” Elaine said, stress audible in her tone. “Do you think she’ll agree to meet with them? Do you think she _should_?”

“I am curious to know what her alethiometer said. Once I know that I’ll be more certain on the path we should take. Right now, I fear allowing them any sort of access to Lyra and the baby.”

“Me too,” agreed Elaine faintly. “It makes me sick to think of her in a room with them.”

“Iorek will protect her. I’m more worried about Vera. I imagine Lyra will want Will to stay here with her—she won’t trust anyone else, I can sense that already—but we must have more people here just in case. Will can’t fight multiple churchmen off if it comes to that.”

Lyra was mildly surprised. She hadn’t voiced to _anyone_ that Will was absolutely the one who would need to stay with Vera (maybe she would have wanted him to go with her to the meeting). But that was exactly how she felt. Will was as capable as Iorek—slightly more, actually, when it came to Vera’s safety since Will was her father on top of it—and if she had Iorek with her, Will needed to be with the baby. And she felt that Will _could_ fight off multiple churchmen if he had to, but it would be hard with Vera, and Serafina was probably right that having more people there to guard Vera would be best. But if they went the route that her alethiometer had suggested—by trying to say the baby died—they would have to be stealthy about it. Maybe a couple witches could hide inside the cottage just in case, but not anywhere to be seen. You don’t put guards in front of an empty vault, after all.

She didn’t want to wake because she felt that even lying here doing nothing was beneficial to her exhaustion, but she knew things that Serafina needed to know. She sat up slowly and ran her hands through her messy hair. She greeted Serafina, and then she set into her alethiometer’s answers without much pause.

“It told me that the Church wants me to agree to put Vera into ‘religious education’ from age four until…I’m assuming eighteen. Clearly with the intention of both brainwashing her and keeping an eye on her. I’m not doing that, of course. I won’t have her anywhere near the Church and I won’t have her listening to their lies. But it told me that I should go to this meeting because I need to tell them that she died.”

Silence swept over the room. As soon as it did, Lyra could hear Will’s soft voice from behind the half-closed bedroom door; he was talking to their daughter, though it didn’t sound like a nursery rhyme: it sounded like a chapter from a medical textbook. She had no idea what time it was, but going by the heaviness in her breasts, it was nearing time for a feed, and she guessed Vera had awoken a bit early. Will seemed to be doing his best to keep her content as long as possible. Lyra felt a surge of affection for him.

“Of course,” Serafina finally muttered, more to herself than to them. “If you can convince them of that, then they’ll be forced to leave you be, and you can sneak off Svalbard and find some place to hide—probably somewhere close to the door between your world and Will’s—and you’ll be able to raise Vera in as close to peace as possible…” she trailed off. “But how can we convince them? They’ll just think we’re lying for this exact reason.”

Here, Lyra felt a bit reluctant to answer. Because what her alethiometer had told her was a bit unfair. “It told me that their alethiometrist has to die and that when he’s found, there needs to be a ‘reading’ written in his notes that says that he saw that my baby _did_ die.”

Serafina nodded. “I supposed as much. He’s the one who could tell them with certainty that Vera is alive, so he couldn’t live if we want this to work. And that would leave the only two alethiometrists alive—you and Dame Hannah—on our side, which is a _huge_ advantage. And I suppose it told you we would be killing him?”

Lyra blinked. “Well, yes, but if you don’t want to murder him, maybe we could…I dunno…steal his alethiometer? That’d work just the same, I expect.”

Of course it wouldn’t. The alethiometer said exactly what it meant. Serafina knew it, and Lyra knew it, but she hated forcing this on the witches for _her_ benefit.

Serafina smiled kindly. “No, I don’t think so. If we stole the alethiometer, they’d know it was foul play. Now, if it appears that their old alethiometrist died of natural causes…well, that won’t look half as suspicious. We have ways to make that happen, as well as ways to bewitch him into writing whatever we want him to write in his own hand.”

Lyra glanced over at Elaine. She looked just as surprised as Lyra had anticipated watching them casually discussing murder. Lyra, for her part, didn’t feel too bad about the alethiometrist being killed. He had worked for the Church for decades, after all, helping to disfigure children, helping to try to kill _Lyra_. If she ever started using her alethiometer for a side as bad as the Church’s, she’d expect a target on her head, too.

“So I suppose we tell the Church that I _will_ meet with them. I’ll go in, I’ll lie, I’ll tell them Vera died at birth, and—”

“What if they want to search the cottage?” Elaine asked.

Lyra faltered. She looked at Pantalaimon. Pantalaimon looked at Kaisa. Kaisa looked up at Serafina.

“We should probably move Vera elsewhere in case of that,” Serafina said. “If we bundle her up well, we could make it to the witch house—Lord Asriel’s old home, I mean. We should move her before the meeting, while the Church is still far from the mainland. And Will, too. Better to keep him, Mary, and you, Elaine, out of it.”

Lyra noticed that she wasn’t part of that list. Would Serafina expect her to stay at the cottage while Will and Vera went to Lord Asriel’s house? At the thought of being separated from her child, her body succumbed to panic.

“If they do move to Lord Asriel’s house before the meeting, I would have to go with them, too,” she said, worried, her mind reeling with a hundred different thoughts. Vera might think she abandoned her—Vera would need to eat—and at that final thought, Lyra felt the heaviness in her chest get overrun by a pins-and-needles sort of sensation, and then she felt wetness soak the fabric of her shirt. She cursed and crossed her arms over her chest, glancing at once at the clock on the wall. It still hadn’t been three full hours. Her body must’ve gotten used to Vera’s sudden interest in eating every _two_ instead.

“You could stay there with them until the Church arrives, but we wouldn’t want them to see your cottage empty, or for one of them or their dæmons to spot you walking down from the house. It would only be a couple hours that you’d have to be away from them.” She retrieved a tea towel and carried it over to Lyra. “We'll need to find a way to prevent this from happening while you're with the Church,” Serafina told her gently. Lyra didn’t feel embarrassed there, in front of Serafina and Elaine, who had both told her plenty of funny stories about their own breastfeeding days, but she flushed with humiliation imagining it happening in front of the churchmen. And she saw the bigger problem without Serafina needing to voice it: if her baby had died during birth, she _wouldn’t_ be leaking, because her milk would’ve long dried up. Lyra would have to drown her form in clothes and coats to hide her changed body. 

“I’ll wear layers,” Lyra said, mopping half-heartedly at her top. 

“We’ll need to make sure the story is clear and consistent, too,” Serafina said, but then she stopped because the last thing Lyra needed was lying lessons. “Actually—you tell us what the story is, and we’ll practice it in case we’re asked, too.”

Her alethiometer had been right. Because as Lyra tried to think about it, she found herself running away from the thought, trying to think of other things in the place of it. It hurt too terribly to imagine, and to lie well, she’d have to imagine it. She struggled with her emotions, reminding herself that Vera _hadn’t_ died, but that she must find a way to pretend if she hoped to keep her safe. _It’s to keep her safe, it’s to keep her safe…_

“Will didn’t make it back. Serafina, you didn’t either. I was alone here. And—and…I pushed and I pushed for hours and hours but…she wasn’t in the right position, she was flipped around, and her foot wanted to come out first, and her head got stuck and…” Lyra reached up and set her hand over her narrowed throat, unable to continue articulating what she was thinking. Her eyes were already burning. The thought was so terrible; it was every paralyzing fear she'd had at the end of her pregnancy combined. “And I tried and I tried but by the time she was out, it was too late—and we couldn’t bury her because the ground was too frozen…so we…” she couldn’t say it.

“Cremated her,” Serafina completed for her, nodding. “Good idea. That way they can’t demand to see the body. I suppose we spread the ashes?”

“Yes. I emptied them into the sea.”

“Very good. That will work, I think, as long as you think you can bear it.”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” she asked, but her skin was already crawling. She draped the towel over her shoulder and stood. “Tell the Church I’ll meet with them two weeks from today. That will give them plenty of time to make arrangements and travel all the way here. Don’t allow them on the main settlement until the day of the meeting. Will and Vera can go to Lord Asriel’s house the night before, and I’ll spend the night and early morning there with them, and then I’ll come back here before they arrive so they don’t see me leaving from anywhere else.”

“All right,” Serafina said, decided. “I’ll tell Iorek and we’ll get the message back to them.”

Lyra nodded. She fled to the bedroom then, needing to see Vera, needing to reassure herself that—despite the horrible story she’d just imagined—her daughter was happy and healthy. Pantalaimon hurried after her.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Will said, surprised. He was holding Vera and gazing out the window, but he turned as she and Pan entered. Lyra smiled hugely at the sight of Vera’s sweet face. It soothed her soul immensely. Pantalaimon hurried over to join Kirjava and Max beneath the window; Max was a lion cub again.

“Yeah. We’ve got to talk, though,” Lyra said. She lifted the towel to showcase her ruined top. “And my body thinks it’s time for another feed.”

“So does our baby. She’s been gnawing on her own hands. I _told her_ it was a bit too early to cannibalize herself—she can’t be _that_ hungry, it’s only been two hours—but she wouldn’t listen. What do we need to talk about? Her appetite? I think she might be a bit dramatic. That’s my medical opinion. Look how chubby her little legs are getting!” He lifted her foot a tiny bit. Vera responded with spirited gurgling and kicked wildly against his hands. Will laughed at her and pressed a kiss to the sole of her tiny foot, his every movement drenched with affection. Lyra smiled.

“No, not her appetite, though I’m starting to think you’re right about the drama thing,” she answered.

Lyra opened her drawers and rummaged around for something clean. She found her very last top—a green one with a hole near the hem—and pulled it out. She sighed. Laundry was becoming a massive issue. It seemed to pile up as soon as they got it under control, and everybody was mostly taking care of their own clothes (except Lyra, but she didn’t exactly know _how_ to wash clothes, and anyway, she’d just birthed an entire baby, so she thought that ought to have made her pretty much exempt from housework presently), so it wasn’t as if everybody was just tossing their clothes on a massive pile expecting a servant to appear and deal with it, but there were so many of them in the tiny cottage, only one wash machine, things took _forever_ to dry, and Vera went through an unbelievable amount of clothes.

“Do you think you could wash some clothes later today?” she asked Will. “Well, I suppose _I_ could do it if—”

“No,” Will interrupted firmly. Lyra guessed he was thinking about the last time she’d ‘washed’ Vera’s clothes. It hadn’t gone very well. She didn’t have much expertise in anything housekeeping related. “I can do it. We’re still towards the back of the laundry queue, but Malcolm would let me cut in front of him I bet.”

Lyra was sure he would, too. “Don’t let me forget to put a proper dress in with it.”

Will arched an eyebrow. “A proper dress?”

“I’ve got to meet with the Church, that’s what we’ve got to talk about…” she trailed off, horrified. She’d realized while rummaging about through the drawers that Vera only had one clean sleepsuit left, and that was a much direr problem than her own clothing. “Do you think if we hung a few of Vera’s things in front of the fire in here that they’d dry by tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, we can do that, don’t worry,” he said, sensing her panic. “So you _are_ meeting with the Church?”

“Yeah,” she said. She decided not to even bothering putting her clean clothes on yet, but she set them nicely atop the chest-of-drawers to give her something to look forward to. If she wasn’t too tired, maybe she could even bathe. “Two weeks from now. And you and Vera need to stay in Lord Asriel’s house the night before.”

She reached for Vera as Kirjava lifted lion cub Max. Kirjava and Pan moved to the bed with him to keep him near Vera (though she was able to stand more and more distance every day, and she was nearing the same level of distance that most kids were able to sustain comfortably) and Lyra sat up against the headboard. As she settled with Vera—who was acting as if she’d been positively _starved—_ she told Will everything. She explained what her alethiometer had said, what she and Serafina had discussed together, what they’d ultimately decided.

“What do you think?” she asked him come the end of her spiel.

He considered it carefully before he answered. “I think it might work, but I think it’s going to be awful for you.”

“Yeah,” she agreed fervently. Her nose burned, but she fought the tears back. “I think so, too. It’s worse that I’m so tired. I think I’ll probably get in there and just sob for an hour straight.”

“Maybe that’ll be enough to convince them,” Kirjava pointed out.

“I hope so,” Lyra worried. For the first time, she worried how well her lie would hold up. It wasn’t something she was accustomed to worrying about.

Will reached over and set his hand on her thigh. “I wish I could be there with you.”

Kirjava butted her head gently against Lyra’s shoulder, rubbing her head there right afterwards, purring softly. Lyra’s nose burned worse. It would have been an immeasurable comfort to have him there at her side. But there were more important things for him to do. “I wish you could, too. But I couldn’t bear to leave Vera behind with anybody but you, Will.”

“I know,” he reassured her. “And I’ll stay with her and I’ll protect her. You don’t need to worry about her, okay? When the time comes, you just get in there, do what you have to do, and get back home.”

But telling a new mum not to worry about her baby was about as futile as futile got. Lyra would worry. She always worried about Vera. And she would worry about Will, too.

“If something happens while I’m meeting with them…I just want you to take her and I want you to go to safety, okay? Go to your world. Stay near the door. I’ll come to you. Don’t stay here and put her in danger. You do what you have to to keep her safe.”

He was horrified. “Lyra, I’m not leaving _you_. Do you know me at all?”

She peered into his fierce, dark eyes, and she smiled. “Yes. And I know you’d never stay where Vera could be hurt. If it comes down to waiting for me or saving her, you save her, every time. She’s a baby. I’m an adult. I can take care of myself. She needs you in a very different way than I need you.” It was practical, honest, and true—like Will—and because of that, she knew he would both agree with it and choose it if the time ever came.

“It won’t come to that,” he argued.

“Probably not,” she agreed, stroking Vera’s hair gently. It was already thick enough that it entirely covered her scalp. “But if it does, that’s what I’m asking you to do.”

“And if this all goes according to plan…if they believe she…died…--” he had as much trouble unsticking the word as Lyra had—“and they decide to leave us be, what’s our plan then?”

She hadn’t considered that. A future where she wasn’t being hunted was foreign to her. “I dunno,” she said, surprised. She looked back down at Vera. “I guess we…live. Find someplace nearby the door in my world—but secluded enough that Vera won’t ever be seen by the wrong people—and we stay relatively hidden here, and we just… _live_.” But that wasn’t right, either, and she could feel that fact nagging at her. “No. We keep _her_ hidden, but I can’t keep myself hidden. I’ve got work to do, Will. A lot of it.”

That fact weighed heavily on her heart, but it didn’t weigh as heavily as the idea of sitting by and doing nothing did. She didn’t know what her next steps would be, but she knew she would be moving forward. She had an important role in her world with her Child Protection Board. Her book appeared to have stymied the Church’s recruitment for the time being, but until they were entirely eradicated, they’d always be a threat, and she’d always have to watch them.

“ _We’ve_ got work to do,” he corrected her firmly. She allowed the correction. Anything she did, he’d be at her side. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

* * *

  
  
But he couldn’t be at her side for this. Two weeks came and went as quickly as the three before it had, and Lyra had to leave him behind as she set out to meet the Church.

“Are you sure you’re warm enough?” Elaine fretted. 

Lyra peeked out at her from beneath her two hats, and over the bulge from her three scarves, and nodded once. Behind Elaine, Will was muffling his laughter into his hand.

“All right,” Mary said, her eyes on the clock. “If you leave now, you’ll make it back to the cottage just in time. You can have a warm drink with Malcolm and then Iorek will be there to walk with you to the meeting place.”

Lyra nodded once, definitively, but she didn’t feel so definite. She was wavering, her eyes drifting more and more towards the corner of Lord Asriel’s sitting room, where Vera was snoozing heavily in her travel cot. Lyra hadn’t slept more than two hours total last night; Vera had had an exceptionally difficult night, almost as if she could sense that Lyra was about to leave her. Lyra knew her daughter was probably just feeling Lyra’s anxiety and feeding off of it, but Lyra couldn’t help it. She knew it was silly, but she just kept thinking about the fact that this would be the very first time she had _ever_ been away from Vera since Vera was created. Vera’s entire life had been spent close to Lyra thus far…from being literally in her womb to never being more than a few feet away…what would she think when Lyra was suddenly gone? Would she think that Lyra left? Would she think that she was abandoning her?

It was that line of thinking—and the guilt and the sadness it caused—that led to Lyra indulging Vera’s neediness. She’d cuddled her and talked to her all night long, and despite how tired she felt now, she didn’t regret it. Who knew how this would turn out? Maybe Will _would_ have to flee with Vera. Lyra wouldn’t regret missing out on sleep to spend time with her baby then.

“It’s going to be okay,” Will told her. His gaze was steady when she met his eyes. She inhaled shakily and nodded once.

“Come here,” he prompted, and she stepped at once into his opened arms. She closed her eyes and inhaled his familiar scent, relaxing totally as she felt his hand smooth down her hair and rest on her back. She hugged around his middle and didn’t let go. “Go do what you do best.”

It was a much better parting phrase than _goodbye_. Instead of leaving her despondent and worried, it filled her with a resurgence of confidence and surety. Right—he was right. She was _Lyra_. She just had to lie. She could do that. She could do that _easily_.

She wanted to walk over and kiss Vera one more time, but she knew if she did, she might never leave. So she hugged Elaine, said goodbye to Mary, and then she set off towards her cottage. It was a good ways from Lord Asriel’s house, but Lyra didn’t mind the walk. She had missed the fresh air, even if it was stinging and frigid. And she wasn’t exactly alone, either.

“Hi!”

Lyra didn’t even have to look behind her. “Hello, Aobel. I wondered when you’d show up.”

“I waited all night outside the house.”

“Sounds scary. All by yourself?”

“I’m not scared. I’m never scared.”

Lyra smiled back at the little bear. She slowed so Aobel could match her pace. “Have you come to escort me home?”

Aobel nodded. “Yes. Also, to show you _this_.”

With a flourish, she pulled something metal and ornate from behind her back. At first, Lyra wasn’t sure what it was, but then she realized it was a small chainlink crafted from different kinds of metals—scraps, most likely. Lyra—who had a fairly strong mental image of Aobel’s future armor by now—knew exactly what it was.

“Oh, Aobel, you’ve made some of your armor!” she gushed.

“Yes!! I _did_! Isn’t it _wonderful_?! I slid on the ground of the forgery room on my belly—I cut myself _four times_ and burned myself three times, look!” Distracted from her story now, she stood up on her hind legs and showed Lyra her wounded belly. Lyra winced. She did have four nasty looking cuts and three angry, red burnt spots.

“That’s awful; did you show your mum? So she could fix it?”

Nearly six weeks ago, Lyra never would’ve asked that question, because it wouldn’t have occurred to her that a mum was the one who could and would do that. But now that _she_ was a mum, everything was different.

“No ‘cause I’d get in trouble for sneaking,” Aobel explained. “I chewed up some bloodmoss and I spat it out and I rubbed the gunk all over my wounds, just like I saw Maja do before. _Anyway_ , Lyra, I crawled on my belly, and there were _six_ male bears in there forging, but they didn’t see me, and I pretended I didn’t see them, and I stole pieces I found lying within reach, and then I hid in a small room until they left, and I _finally_ got to use the fire and make something for my armor.” She stared at her chainlink like Lyra stared at Vera, in complete awe of the brilliance of her creation. “I wish I could show King Iorek.”

“You can. He might be angry at first, but anybody could see and appreciate how skilled you are with metal,” Lyra said truthfully.

Aobel beamed. “Maybe I’ll tell him. Yeah! Maybe I will!”

She practiced telling Iorek the rest of the walk back to the cottage. Before Lyra parted from Aobel, she kneeled down and took the cub’s furry little face in her hands.

“Aobel,” she said seriously. “You must promise me something.”

Aobel stared dead into her eyes with a grave seriousness. “Anything.”

“I know you want to protect me because I’m your dad’s friend, and I appreciate that. But your dad is already protecting me. But there’s someone…someone who _doesn’t_ have a protector…” Lyra trailed off.

Aobel nodded at once. “Vera.”

“Right. My baby, Vera. She doesn’t have a panserbjørn guardian at all.”

“That’s awful. Humans are weak. She can’t survive without one.”

“I was hoping…being that you’re so brave and strong, and the future queen on top of it…” Lyra trailed off suggestively.

“That _I_ would be Vera’s protector?” Aobel said, excited and humbled all at once. She stood straighter. “ _Yes_ , Lyra. Yes!”

“I ask now because there may be people coming to the cottage in search of her. If you were to play nearby here, and if you were to see human men—men who are not Will or Malcolm—come here, do you think you could go to the witch house and warn Will? But without being followed by the bad men. Are there other paths to get to the witch house, paths that humans can’t take?”

Aobel snorted. “We always go the same ways with you because these are the _only_ ways you can go with your human legs. There are _loads_ of ways to get around here that humans can’t follow, with their eyes or with their legs.”

Lyra nodded, reassured. “Good. Now, this is important, Aobel: you shouldn’t ever approach these men who aren’t Will or Malcolm. They could have weapons that could hurt you. How could you protect Vera if you get killed?”

“I couldn’t,” she said gravely.

“Right. So you mustn’t put yourself in danger in any way. All I want you to do is quietly go tell Will if you see foreign men searching the cottage. Okay?”

Aobel nodded. “O-kay! I will be Vera’s protector, yes I will!”

Lyra stroked her face affectionately. “Thank you, Aobel.”

“Wow, I really am growing up. I made my first piece of armor _and_ I made my first oath!”

Lyra laughed. “Time really does fly, doesn’t it?”

“Mmhmm,” Aobel agreed.

Lyra had just enough time to sit with Malcolm for some chocolatl. She felt she should’ve been more nervous than she was, but as the minutes ticked by, her resolve strengthened.

“Don’t open the door for anybody,” Lyra repeated to Malcolm. “Not unless you’ve got somebody here with you.”

He saluted her. “Understood. Don’t worry about me. And _you_ keep your guard up at all times.”

“Always do,” she promised him.

He reached out and hugged her before she left. She squeezed him back warmly.

“Be careful,” they said at the same time.

Asta fussed over Pantalaimon before they left, brushing the little balls of snow from the fur of his paws, and then Lyra and Pantalaimon set off to meet Iorek just outside the cottage. He was in a very serious mood and didn’t say much, which suited Lyra just fine, because she needed to think. She told herself with every step they took that it wasn’t _quite_ time yet to start getting into the right mindset, but the closer they drew, the less time she had, and she realized she was procrastinating.

 _Okay,_ she thought, _you can do this. Just imagine it. Imagine that Serafina hadn’t come, that Will hadn’t come, that Malcolm hadn’t been there. Imagine you went through all that pain…for days…and then she…and then—_

But she had to stop. Her eyes were already burning with tears, her chest felt tight, her throat ached. This was going to be harder than she thought.

* * *

 

She recognized four of the six men: the man with the vulture dæmon who’d intruded into her room at Jordan a number of months ago, the Oxford priest—Father Phelan—who’d had a ‘meeting’ with her around that same time, the Bishop of Oxford, and the Head of the Magisterium. The other two she had never seen before. They stood from the table as she and Iorek approached the large tent they were meeting underneath; the two men she’d never met before extended their hands for her to shake.

She didn’t want to shake them, but she was choosing her battles carefully.

“Thank you for meeting with us,” the first said. His dæmon was a bee, and as the man spoke, she zoomed over and buzzed near Lyra’s ear. Pantalaimon’s paws twitched as if to smack her from the air. “I’m Dr. Arthur Smith.”

Lyra glanced quickly at Pantalaimon. A doctor? What sort— a doctor like Will or a doctor like Malcolm?

“Doctor of…?” she heard herself ask skeptically.

“Medicine,” he clarified.

Lyra and Pan looked at each other again. What did the Church need a doctor at the meeting for?

She shook the second man’s hand. His hedgehog dæmon sat perched motionless on his shoulder. 

“André Quinto. I’m the new head of the recently-reestablished League of St. Alexander.” The man—young, probably around Lyra’s age—gave her a placating smile. “Your mother’s creation.”

Lyra had to shut down his attempts at flattery at once. She was not interested. “Nothing of my mother’s doing pleases me or brings me pride. You’d do better not to mention it.”

The man’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He sat down. That was that.

As soon as they were all seated around the rickety travel table, Pantalaimon jumped into her lap. Lyra set a warm hand in his fur. She noticed that nobody had introduced themselves to King Iorek, and it offended her.

“Shouldn’t you introduce yourselves to the king?” she shot at them.

There was a pause. The six men exchanged glances. And then they rose again, one by one, and introduced themselves to Iorek, who merely peered dangerously at them from behind Lyra’s chair. They quickly sat back down.

“Lady Belacqua—” the head of the Magisterium began.

“Silvertongue. Not a lady.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Was it Dame Hannah of St. Sophia’s College who taught you to interrupt a man when he’s speaking?”

Pantalaimon’s fur bristled beneath Lyra’s hand. “No. It was Dame Hannah of St. Sophia’s College who taught me to correct inconsiderate people who deliberately call me by the wrong name as a power play.”

The Bishop of Oxford stepped in. He was much more acquainted with Lyra’s attitude. “Lyra—may we call you Lyra?”

“No. You may call me Ms. Silvertongue,” Lyra said. She knew she was being unnecessarily difficult, but she despised them, and she had a terrible time masking that hatred.

“Ms. Silvertongue, then. We have come to broker an agreement of sorts with you. It has become wearisome and expensive chasing you all over the planet. We’ve realized there’s an easy solution that will work for the both of us. We’re hoping you will hear us out.”

Lyra’s face twisted into a scowl naturally— _that_ feeling was genuine. The tears blurring her eyes, though…they marked the beginning of a very difficult façade. “I wish you had written directly to me first, then. Because I could have told you not to waste your time coming here. Not to waste your time patrolling the shores or watching the skies.”

The CCD man with the vulture dæmon, who’d visited her room at St. Sophia’s, glared hatefully at her. “You should at least hear us out before you refuse our offer. It’s a very generous one.”

Lyra knew that it wasn’t really. They were going to offer to ‘let’ her child live in exchange for her promise that she’d allow them to brainwash her. But none of it mattered if her child was dead. And that was what had to be true in that moment. In that moment, she had to sit in the very real reality that her child _was_ dead. She had labored for days, hadn’t she, and nobody had come. She had felt an awful resistance as she pushed and pushed, and then she had finally felt the crescendo as it ended, as Vera slid from her, but it had been all wrong—body limp, face purple and bruised all wrong. She had tried to save her, but she hadn’t really known what to do, and her body had been shaking and shaking with blood loss and adrenaline, and her baby never cried, and she held her little lifeless body until Serafina came, and there was no Vera. There was no Vera. There was no Vera, and it was all her fault.

 _But there is_ , a voice in her head said desperately, swimming above the waves of agony washing over Lyra. _There is. You just had her in your arms hours ago, healthy and happy._

She pushed that away. She thought about how fragile her baby was, how easy it seemed for an accident to happen, the tiny things that _could_ take her away: fever, falls, extreme temperatures…it seemed brutal that something so precious was also so weak.

She knew intense emotions had been playing out across her face as she’d thought. It had been intentional. She looked up at them and she said: “There’s no point in it. Because you already got what you want. My baby—” she broke off, the word sticking again, her tongue not wanting to form it. Her throat narrowed. Saying it felt like tempting fate; Lyra didn’t want to. But she had to. “My baby is dead.”

And if she hadn’t hated them before, she would have hated them then. The head of the Magisterium openly beamed. The CCD man and Mr. Quinto had to fight to keep the smiles off their faces. Only the doctor amongst them had the decency to look emotionless. Behind Lyra, Iorek growled lowly, and Pantalaimon was trembling with rage in Lyra’s lap.

“Oh,” the head of the Magisterium finally said. “I see.”

Lyra’s world was growing blurry as tears filled her eyes. Now that she had said it, she was terrified she would somehow make it true, and all she could think about was her tiny baby—her sweet face, her soft, dark, downy hair, her fine brows, her tiny fists—lying motionless and lifeless in her arms. It opened up a deep, severe ache within her, the sort that rotted and ruined, one she knew thousands of women lived through every day—but how? The emotional pain of it caused physical pain, in her heart, in her stomach, and Lyra knew why she had shied away from this topic so instinctively: there was nothing worse. At least when your dæmon died, you died. If your baby died, which would hurt nearly as much, you had to stay here with that pain.

“Forgive us for our lack of decorum, Ms. Silvertongue,” Mr. Quinto interjected, “but we would like some more information. And to see the grave.”

Lyra looked away from them, genuinely disgusted, genuinely pained. She forgot in the rush of her wild sorrow that it wasn’t true. “You want me to prove it to you,” she corrected him.

“It would be all too easy for you to deceive us.”

“Well,” she snapped, her voice cracking over them unevenly like logs popping in a fire, “I can’t show you a body if that’s what you want. The ground—it was so cold that—we—” and here, she had the most horrible mental image yet, one that brought forth a horrible sounding wail she hadn’t intended to make— “we had to cremate her and I—I—I—” she gasped around the rest of it. And she wanted to leave. She wasn’t enjoying this, not one bit. It wasn’t fun; it hurt. She understood now what her alethiometer had warned her about. If it hadn’t told her she’d react this way, she might have given in and fled.

“Ms. Silvertongue,” the doctor interjected, soft and sympathetic. “Could you tell me what happened to your baby?”

But she was still finding it difficult to catch her breath, and her emotions were very palpable and real, and so Pantalaimon rose up on her lap and answered for her. She’d rarely heard his voice so tear-soaked.

“We were in pain for days and days,” he told the doctor. He was trembling in her lap. “It felt like it would never stop. And the baby just wouldn’t come out…then…and then she started to, but it wasn’t— _right_. She had…I dunno what it’s called, but her foot was trying to come through first—”

“She was breech,” the doctor provided.

“Yes. And for hours we pushed and pulled at her trying to…but her head was stuck…and when she finally came out, she…she was limp and we didn’t—we didn’t—we didn’t know what to do, and there was blood everywhere, and we were alone and we couldn’t stop shaking, and we tried, but—and—” he lowered down into Lyra’s lap again. Lyra could feel his pain. He had put more detail into it than they had decided. It was horrible, but she was grateful for him.

“It was my fault,” she heard herself say, without having thought of it, and the rush of guilt she felt was so familiar to her. It was the same thing she felt whenever she felt momentarily annoyed with Vera. “I didn’t know what to do, and because of that, she’s dead.”

Her voice high and nasally, tears teeming in her eyes, she could see at least half of the men believed her. The head of the Magisterium and the Bishop of Oxford seemed reluctant, though. Lyra watched as their dæmons leaned in together behind their humans’ chairs and whispered, and all the while she forced herself to hold horrible images in her mind to keep her grief alive, wracked with guilt over them the entire time. Finally, after nearly three minutes of their dæmons whispering and Lyra sitting there crying, they looked back at her.

“You are quite adept at deceiving us, Lady Belacqua—something the Bishop was quick to remind me. We can always ask our alethiometrist whether or not you’re being truthful with us as soon as we return, but we won’t be making a trip back here afterwards to try and bargain with you again. And, in fact, if we find out you lied, we’ll consider that an act of treason against our Church.”

Treason against a Church? Lyra wanted terribly to point out that, strictly speaking, that couldn’t happen, but now wasn’t the time. They were still talking, anyway. It was the doctor addressing her now.

“If you’d like to satiate their suspicions now, I can examine you somewhere more private; there are certain things that happen to the body that will prove to me that what you say is true, that your baby died at birth.”

Lyra’s skin crawled. She wanted to instinctively cover her arms over her chest, but she caught herself at the last moment. She glared fiercely at him instead.

“I en’t letting you _touch me_ ,” she spat, insulted, horrified he’d even suggested it. The doctor’s bee dæmon made the mistake of fluttering too close to Pantalaimon—he snapped viciously at the air, narrowly missing the bee (and Lyra knew he’d missed on purpose, but that he wouldn’t miss next time). The bee flitted away quickly.

“Very well,” the doctor said, shrugging. “If you’ve got no tangible proof to give us—”

“I shouldn’t have to go out of my way to _prove_ to you that this horrible, awful thing happened to me! I don’t know why I’m even meeting with you in the first place! You’re awful, terrible men, and if there were an Authority, he would have destroyed you long ago if he were any good! I told you what happened—and it’s the truth, it’s the horrible truth I wish I could change every second of every day—and you can run home and you can ask your alethiometrist to confirm it, and in a month or so when he finally works out the answer, and you figure out that I was right, I don’t want to hear a word from you! I don’t want to see you ever again! This is over—all of it! There’s no baby for any prophecy, there’s no fall of the Church for you to worry about, and you can go on and leave me be! Do it! Leave me _alone_!”

With every ounce of energy she had left, she broke down into tears and she cried, and cried, and cried. The horror she felt at the lie she had created fueled an inexhaustible sorrow within her. And then, after a certain point, she was crying simply because she was so tired that she couldn’t see an end to her tiredness. Pantalaimon stood in her lap and he snapped and snarled at anyone who even appeared to _think_ about coming near her.

She could tell that they weren’t sure what to do. They looked at each other uneasily as she wept, none of them accustomed to this side of her, none of them sure how to take what she was telling them. She kept her tears going past the point she thought she could as they debated in tense voices amongst themselves. Finally, the head of the Magisterium stood. Lyra looked up at him automatically, wiping at her wet cheeks.

“A few follow-up questions, Lady Belacqua,” he said stiffly. “Is the young man with three fingers still able to visit you?”

“No. He hit his head when _your lot_ crashed into Malcolm’s boat. He’s gone, too.”

They exchanged started looks. “Gone—as in dead?”

She hadn’t planned on this part. She hadn’t asked her alethiometer about it. She hadn’t run the idea by Serafina or Will or anybody. But lying was equal parts instinct and inspiration, and she felt like she needed to take this wherever it led.

“Yes,” she uttered, but it was barely audible, and she had never heard herself sound so broken. She shuddered once at the idea of being without Will and without Vera, of losing them both in such a tangible way, her _family_ …and then her shuddering turned to trembling. Even Iorek moved closer to her and nosed her shoulder, concerned.

“So there’s no chance of another child,” one said, and she realized that had been what they were worried about: her and Will having another baby to fulfill the prophecy later on.

She didn’t even answer them. She just gave into the gaping hole forming in her chest and sobbed some more.

“That’s _enough_ ,” Iorek suddenly growled, and she noticed as she peeked from underneath her lashes that four out of six of the men jumped when he did. “You’re being cruel and unconscionable. You can see how upset she is.”

“We will say what we need to and be on our way. We’ll be out of the main settlement grounds an hour from now as previously agreed upon, Iorek,” the Magisterium head said. He looked at Lyra after that. “We will be checking with our alethiometrist to confirm your story. While we wait for his confirmation, we will consider any attempt to leave Svalbard on your part an act of war. We will make it plain when you’re permitted to leave and go on your way, but we can’t permit that until we have proof of your story. I’m sure you understand.”

“And what grounds do _you_ have to hold her prisoner on _my_ lands?” Iorek boomed.

Everybody backed down—except the head of the Magisterium. He smiled.

“Why, Iorek, if you tire of having her as your guest, you’re more than welcome to turn her over to us, and we’ll keep her company until we have reliable confirmation of the child’s death.”

Iorek’s responding roar was so furious that Lyra felt the seat beneath her shake. All six men jumped a couple feet back from Iorek. The doctor with the bee dæmon even lifted his leather bag as if to shield his face. That answered that.

Lyra leaned against Iorek as they walked from the meeting area, Pantalaimon in her arms, and she didn’t let her façade down until she was back inside the cottage. She had to wait until the churchmen were completely gone to go back to Will and Vera, and the wait was already miserable. She felt shattered and distressed.

“Well?” Malcolm asked at once, sitting straight up on the sofa.

Lyra shrugged weakly. She didn’t even know how to feel. She couldn’t tell yet whether she had just saved Vera or put her in more danger.

“I dunno,” she said. “I think they believed me. If everything goes according to plan with the witches, maybe it worked. I dunno.”

He frowned. “You look so tired, Lyra. Go sleep. You can’t leave here until we get the all clear, anyway, right? Sleep. I’ll keep an eye on things out here. I’ll wake you at once if anything happens.”

She didn’t have the strength to argue. “Okay,” she said faintly.

She and Pantalaimon made their way to their room. She automatically went to walk around the cot—but the cot wasn’t there. Her heart jolted with horror before she remembered that they’d packed it down and taken it to Lord Asriel’s house for the night.

She fell down on her bed, fully dressed, and fell asleep at once. Her dreams were twisting horrors.

* * *

 

“What do you think, Mary? About Namibia?”

“I think it’s the best bet for Lyra and Will. They’ll need to stay close to the door; we don’t know yet how long they’ll be able to stay between worlds before they begin to fall ill…we’ll have to ask Lyra to ask her alethiometer—if she’s feeling up to it…”

“Oh, yes,” Will’s mum said, suddenly sounding bashful. “I just meant…well, now I see, of course…”

Mary was lost. Will could tell that without even opening his eyes; it was obvious in her longer-than-usual pause before responding. “What do you see?”

“You’ll go back to Oxford. Of course—it’s your home, it’s where you work. I don’t know why I thought…but anyway, I do hope you’ll visit.”

Will _did_ open his eyes at that. He lifted his neck slightly—just enough that he could see over Vera towards the corner Mary and his mum were in, sitting in expensive, overstuffed leather armchairs. He was lying on the couch while Vera snoozed on his chest.

“Oh,” Mary said back, and Will saw her blink, surprised. Will didn’t know why she was; he considered her family and had for years. For a few years, she _was_ …she’d assumed guardianship of Will while his mother sought treatment so that Will wouldn’t be put in foster care until his mother was deemed ‘fit’ to care for him again. She had shared a living space with him and his mother for nearly a decade now. Of course they’d want her to go with them.

“Silly of me,” Will’s mum muttered.

“No, I was actually thinking ‘silly me’ because I sort of assumed that I _was_ coming along all the times we’ve talked about moving to Namibia. I’ve already got a plan about all the things I want to study…the elephants, for one…how did they know to help us? Are they communicating in ways we’re not aware of? What about that angel—what is his ultimate goal? And the door—the door! I could wax poetry about the experiments I want to do surrounding the door. I mean, if you were thinking it would be a strictly Parry relocation, I suppose I can find different living arrangements of my own and I won’t be a bother, but I’m definitely moving regardless.”

Will rested his head against the cushions again. He lightly brushed Vera’s dark wavy hair with his fingers; she cooed softly in her sleep. Will smiled.

“No, _that_ would be silly…of course you should be with us! You’re part of our family, Mary. Isn’t she, Will? Oh, he’s resting…well, you are, and he’d tell you as much.”

“She is,” he answered, his eyes still closed.

“Plus I imagine the newlyweds will probably want a place of their own for a while once things are calmer, and I’d be glad for a roommate.”

“What about that, Will, huh?” Mary shot at him. He could tell she was angling to tease him from her tone. “Newlyweds? What’s this about?”

Will hadn’t even noticed the slipup. It hadn’t sounded out of place to him. He wondered why that was.

“I meant…you know what I meant. Maybe not newlyweds officially, but they’re sort of newlyweds. A new _family_ , then,” his mum corrected.

Will caught himself smiling. He liked the idea of that very much.

“That actually brings up a genuine concern about Vera and Lyra in our world. We have no documentation of any sort for them. Vera doesn’t have a birth certificate. As far as I know, she doesn’t really have a name beyond _Vera,_ even. We’ll be able to get into Namibia through the door of course, but once we’re there, we’ll be very limited on where we can go, and the things we can do. Unless we get forged documents and passports for them, but I’m just a nun-turned-physicist…I don’t exactly know many black market contacts.”

“I do,” Will’s mum said helpfully.

Will sat up _completely_ at that. It was a good thing he’d kept his hand on Vera’s little back to hold her in place because she might’ve slid down into his lap if he hadn’t. He set his other hand beneath her bottom to hold her against his chest and stared at his mum.

“I’m sorry?” he demanded.

Vera gave a sputtering, angry cry at being disturbed. Will went to set her in the travel cot set up beside the sofa, thinking she could drift back off and he could go join his mum and Mary’s conversation, but she began shrieking the moment he started to lower her in. She was getting a bit spoiled; within the past week, she’d begun to openly favor (and demand) sleeping on Will’s chest or in Lyra’s arms, and she made her discontent for the cot known. From their spot in a nest of blankets on the carpet, kitten Max hissed and spat while Kirjava did her best to calm him.

“Better not,” Mary warned Will, watching Vera and Max put up a fight. “She wants her dad.”

Will was so used to being needed that he’d never realized how nice it was to be _wanted_ , too. He knew Vera needed him—she relied on him for almost everything—but she was starting to get old enough to really show a preference for him and Lyra, and that felt rewarding, too.

He decided to sit rather than lie on the couch so he could be a part of the conversation and still avoid a Vera Meltdown, and thankfully, Vera seemed content with that. He readjusted her so she was cradled in his arms and then turned his focus back to his mum.

“Okay. _What_ , Mum?”

She nodded. “It was something I looked into when I first got sick, when I first started having my delusions…I thought the bad men were after us, that we’d have to flee the country, and so I needed new identities for us…” she trailed off, shamed. The more time that passed, the harder it seemed for her to talk about those days.

“Elaine, do you think you’d know how to get in contact with these people again? Would it be safe?”

She chewed on her thumbnail. “I _think_ so…I’m willing to try.”

“No, Mum,” Will said at once, firmly. “You don’t need to talk to criminals and put yourself in danger. Lyra and I will figure it out.”

There was a long list of things they had to figure out, but Will was trying not to worry too much about it. It wouldn’t do him any good. Instead, he distracted himself with talking to his baby daughter, who was cooing at his shoulder and seemingly done with sleep. He held her in front of him so he could see her face as he did. She cooed back at him and kicked her legs happily the entire time Will talked to her (he was recapping their entire day in minute detail, just to give him something to say), and the few times he trailed off, her little face crumpled into an expression of outrage.

“You just like feeling important, is that it?” he teased. He caught her chubby foot as it nearly kicked his jaw. He kissed it, smiling the entire time, full of affection for his tiny, amusing baby, and she responded with a string of gurgles. “If only you knew how important you really are…Mummy is at a meeting with loads of awful people because of how important you are. Oh, but don’t worry—she’ll be just fine,” he said, as if a six-week-old had any concept of _worry_. Vera cooed right back at him, emphatically this time, and he paused as if she were really speaking and nodded. “Right. Of course.”

Across the room, Mary laughed. “I wonder if she _is_ saying something in baby language. I’d love to hear it. I bet half the time she’s swearing.”

“No!” Elaine defended Vera. “She’s a sweet girl! The sweetest! She’d never!”

Will bounced her ever so slightly. She seemed to like that; she babbled more incessantly. “Is that true, Vera? Are you sweet?” She cooed and kicked and watched him with adoring eyes. He brought her close and kissed her tiny forehead, her chubby cheeks, her itty nose. She snuggled closer into his embrace when he cradled her to his chest afterwards. “I think that’s a yes. So that’s settled. We’ll fill Mummy in once she’s home. You’re sweet—it’s your official trait.”

“Will,” Kirjava whispered. Will glanced down at her blanket nest. Max had changed into the softest baby bunny one could imagine, with fluffy tufts of bright white fur like cotton, and Will met Kirjava’s eyes, the same thought flowing through both of them. They laughed, amused and somewhat touched. They couldn’t help but feel like Max’s sudden choice of form was him and Vera somehow understanding and agreeing with Will’s declaration (what was sweeter than a fluffy baby bunny?) though Will tried to remind himself that Vera was much too young to comprehend much of anything. She couldn’t understand the conversation Will was having with Mary and his mum…but maybe she could show the way _she_ felt, and maybe she felt sweet when she was being coddled (as Will was so adept at doing. He’d never before worried that he’d be the ‘soft’ parent, but suddenly, it was a serious concern, especially considering Lyra was also definitely going to be a ‘soft’ parent. Who would be the disciplinarian? He thought—and hoped—that he’d become much more sensible once his child was actually old enough to start making questionable choices.)

Sweet Vera wasn’t so sweet later as her feeding time came and went with no Lyra in sight. Will was growing extremely worried about her, and Vera’s shrieking didn’t help. She had gone from snoozing sweetly in Will’s arms, with Max the soft baby bunny cozied up against Kirjava, to hollering like her life depended on it, Max changing into a snapping baby crocodile.

“It’s not even been four hours yet,” Will tried to reason with her, “you’re going to be okay, I promise.”

She did not believe him, and she was quickly growing hysterical. Will reminded himself that she couldn’t understand the promise ‘Mummy will be here soon’. Every other time in her short life, she’d felt hunger, she’d cried, and Lyra had fed her, but she was crying now, and there was no Mummy, and the hunger wasn’t going away. Her panic was natural, and he tried his hardest to soothe her, but she was making herself more and more upset. Will and Lyra had talked about giving her a bottle if Lyra got caught up longer than anticipated, or if something happened and they got separated, so Will walked around and around with Vera while his mum mixed the formula. But Vera was so upset that the taste and feeling of something new sent her over the edge. Will pushed the bottle between her lips as she shrieked, and her tongue pushed it back out at once, and she began screaming even louder.

“Uh oh,” Mary said, her hands over her ears.

“She’s just got to calm down,” Will reassured Mary, but his heart was pounding, and he felt sick. All his knowledge about babies and behavior and nutrition left him in his panic. All he could think was _what if something happened and Lyra_ doesn’t _come back? What if I’ve lost her? And what if Vera refuses to take a bottle_ ever _and she starves and I lose both of them?_

He was catastrophizing, but his baby’s distressed cries did that to him. He ended up making the kitchen sink an impromptu baby bath (once his mum sanitized it), and once Vera was held in the warm water, she settled down a bit. As soon as she was sniffling rather than shrieking, he shifted her weight to one hand—a tricky feat beneath the water when she was so slippery and squirmy—and offered her the bottle with his other one. This time, she tentatively accepted it, though, for the first few confused sucks, she was looking at Will like he was absolutely insane; her eyebrows were pursed incredulously over her wide blue eyes. Gradually, though, her eyes closed, and she relaxed as she drank, and Will didn’t _dare_ move her from the warm water until she’d finished most of it. When he did, she was in a much better mood. She let him put a nappy on her and dress her without putting up any fuss. He held her close and kissed the top of her head as she drifted off to sleep. Max was a bunny again.

Now he just had to worry about Lyra.

* * *

 

He worried an hour more, and then she came crashing into the house, stricken and windswept, her cheeks bright red from the cold. She was gasping and visibly upset; Will rose at once, his heart plummeting.

“What happened?” he asked gravely.

But she hardly paid him any mind. She spotted Vera in his arms and rushed over, her hands trembling as she reached for her, a confusing series of apologies tumbling from her lips and crashing into each other in an incoherent rush. After a moment, Will realized what was wrong: she thought Vera had been starving here waiting for her.

“She’s fine, I gave her a bottle. It’s okay,” he reassured. He passed Vera to her; she clutched her to her heart and just kept apologizing. Will didn’t know if she heard a word he said.

“I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry, Vera, I only meant to sleep until Iorek told us the churchmen were completely gone from the main settlement, but Malcolm came in and woke me and told me and I just…I meant to get up but I just…I fell asleep again and…I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Lyra. She’s _fine_ ,” he repeated, and then she looked at him. Her eyes were glassy. He was baffled by her level of distress. “She drank the entire bottle, but she wasn’t very impressed with the overall experience. She kept looking at me like this,” Will perfectly mimicked the judgmental pout and furrow of Vera’s unhappy face. He’d thought it was funny—Mary had laughed softly from across the room—but Lyra’s face only fell more. And then, before he could reach for her, she collapsed into tears. Will felt a current of horrified shock flow through him at the sight.

“I-I’m a _horrible_ mum,” she gasped between weeping, and it was so ridiculous it might’ve been funny…if it wasn’t for the degree of guilt and misery in her eyes. She really believed it. “I-I’m so _selfish_! I was so tired and I was just focused on _me_ , just like—”

She stopped short of saying something—probably _Mrs. Coulter_ if Will had to guess—and maybe that was the root of it all right there.

Will’s mum stepped in and hesitantly took Vera from Lyra’s trembling arms. She didn’t fight her on it but rather gave her up readily as if she’d already decided she couldn’t be trusted with her. Will knew his mum meant well, but he hadn’t been worried: Lyra would never drop Vera. He felt that had only made Lyra feel worse, and he was right.

“It’s too hard,” she wept passionately, her arms crossing over her chest. “I can’t do it—I can’t be a mum—I thought I could—but I can’t—and—and—” she broke off gasping, growing genuinely hysterical as it all flowed from her, weeks and weeks of emotions she’d obviously held at bay, fueled every day by her fatigued delirium.

And those words frightened Will. He didn’t think she’d ever really run off and leave him alone with Vera, but she was clearly hurting, and he hadn’t noticed the depth of _that_ , so what else might he miss?

“Okay,” Will said firmly, seriously. He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to do what he did best, and he needed to take control of the problem and he needed to fix it. “Come on. Come with me.”

She resisted his guiding arm. Vera had begun to cry. She looked over towards the direction of Vera’s weeping: Will’s mum was rocking her, cooing softly to her while Kirjava held baby badger Max in between her front paws. Lyra didn’t want to leave her, but a sad and whimpering looking Pantalaimon walked miserably over to Kirjava’s side and then said: “Go. I’ll watch her.” Lyra listened to him the first time—a first in itself.

Will led her into one of the bedrooms. As soon as they were in the room, he shut the door and then made her sit on the bed. She leaned against him as he sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“Lyra, look at me,” he ordered, and she did.

He peered intently into her eyes, his mouth pressed into a firm line, his left hand rising up to brush her tears back. She had never looked more heartbreaking to him. “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

She parted her lips to protest at once, but he continued before she could.

“You’re expecting too much of yourself. You’re pushing yourself too hard and you’re blaming yourself for stuff that isn’t even—”

“But it _is_!” she interrupted hotly. “It’s my responsibility—all of it! I left her here and she probably thought I abandoned her and she was hungry and I…I went back to sleep, Will!”

“So what?” he shot back, interrupting her, too. “So what?”

She appeared stunned. She looked at him with her lips parted, stumbling over her words. “So—so— _everything_ , Will! She was hungry!”

“Yes. She was hungry. And she was fed. And she’s fine. You needed the sleep; I don’t blame you at all for wanting to sleep longer, it was the first time you’ve gotten more than two hours of sleep at once for _weeks_. You needed it. You take such great care of her every day, tirelessly, _selflessly_ , and this doesn’t change that at all. You’re still a wonderful mum.”

She had already started shaking her head before he was done speaking. Her eyes were bright with tears and her chin was trembling stubbornly. “No, I’m not! I thought that I could be if only I gave it everything I had, but I _am_ giving it everything I have, and I’m still making mistakes. Maybe it’s hardwired into me—being a bad mum. Because my mum was rubbish at it. Maybe I’ll be awful at it no matter what I do.”

“I think _that’s_ rubbish,” he said, but his voice was gentle. “You’re wonderful with our daughter. My only worry is that you’re not taking care of _yourself_. I think you’re so afraid that you’ll end up like your own mother that you won’t let yourself relax. Nobody does _everything_ by the book all the time, Lyra. And mistakes will eventually happen. You can’t…run yourself so ragged that one tiny thing like oversleeping makes you feel like a horrible mother. You can ask anybody in this cottage and they’ll tell you that you’re a _phenomenal_ mum.”

“Then why don’t I feel like one?” she sniffed. She turned and hid her face in his shirt.

This answer was easy. He smiled sadly. “Because you’re sleep deprived, and hormonal, and overwhelmed, and you’ve been cooped up for weeks.”

She couldn’t exactly argue with any of that.

“I just love her so much,” she whispered, and that brought on another round of weeping. She fell back into his embrace and cried freely for another few minutes before she could get the rest of her words out. “She’s so fragile, and I feel this…massive, crushing responsibility, for her life, for everything. And I just want to be _good_. I want her to feel cherished and loved and protected. I want to do everything right for her.”

“I know you do,” he said. "But we're a team, Lyra. I know right now there's so much more on you than on me, but I'm still here for you and for Vera. So you overslept-- she was still fed. I figured it out. She's _okay_. I know you've got a lot on your shoulders, but you don't have to carry it alone. I can help. You've got to _let me_." He pulled back on her shoulders gently so he could look down at her and meet her eyes. He brushed her tears away again. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” she said at once. 

“Then you need to trust me when I say that you _are_ doing everything right for her. It’s only your exhaustion making you feel that you aren’t.”

She looked ashamed. “I’m not, though, Will. Because sometimes…sometimes when she wakes me up… I feel annoyed at her, and sometimes for a few seconds, I even think…maybe I won’t get up just yet. And when I overslept today…when Malcolm first woke me…I remember thinking…‘just a few more minutes won’t hurt, she'll live’…and then I woke and it had been an hour and—and I’ve never felt so… _awful_. All I could think about as I ran here was that my baby was in pain because of _me_ , because of my selfishness.”

Will frowned.  He wasn't even sure where to begin unpacking all that. “Lyra, _everybody_ feels annoyed at her for a moment when she wakes us up. Including me and you. Seeing as you’re the one who _really_ misses out on sleep, of course you’d feel frustrated and irritated. Being a good mother doesn’t mean you stop being human. You’ve got to relax. You’re nothing like Mrs. Coulter as a parent, Lyra, _nothing._ You’re actually _being_ a parent, for one. You’re here. Do you have plans to run off and leave Vera?”

The pain that flashed over her features at that question answered it completely. “ _No_. I would never – could never. Not _ever_.”

“So stop worrying so much, okay? If you start being a shit mother, I’ll tell you.”

She actually smiled a bit at that. He smiled back, so relieved to see her feeling a bit better.

“Promise?” she asked.

“I promise. You know I love telling people what to do.”

“You do like that,” agreed Lyra.

“You need to sleep more, too,” he told her firmly, using his doctor-voice now. "I promise you you'll feel one hundred times better with some proper sleep."

“All right, Dr. Parry, I'll try,” she sighed. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. He had to bite his tongue to keep from saying something about germs. Now probably wasn't the best time for a hygiene lesson.

He hugged her tightly when she gave him a brave smile. After a long moment, he became gradually aware of the wet fabric of her shirt and her stiff posture. He loosened his arms at once.

“Sorry,” he said, chagrined. He hadn’t thought about the fact that Vera had missed her feeding, meaning Lyra was probably in a lot of pain right now. “I’ll go get her. I bet you’re in pain.”

“Loads,” she admitted. “I’m mostly shocked that I slept through the discomfort.”

“I’ll get her. You can feed her—she’ll be more than happy to eat early, I can promise you that—and then we can go home and have a nap together. How does that sound?”

She looked emotional again. He was afraid she was upset, but after a moment, she smiled. “It sounds like one of the many reasons I always knew you were the only person I ever wanted to be with for the rest of my life. ‘Cause you know me, Will. You’re my best friend.”

Touched, he said: “And you’re mine.”

* * *

 

Vera was _beyond_ happy to see her. As soon as Will brought her close enough to Lyra that she could make out her face, she began gurgling and cooing and kicking her legs so wildly that Will nearly dropped her. He laughed.

“I think she missed you,” he said.

“I missed _her_ ,” Lyra said, in that soft-fierce voice Will was realizing was her ‘mum voice’.

She took Vera from Will and cuddled her close for a brief moment, just long enough to kiss her hair and exhale in relief.

“It was so hard pretending that she was—” she stopped, pained. “It was awful.”

Will sat beside her on the bed. He wanted to ask her what happened during the meeting (now that she was feeling better, his curiosity was dominating his thoughts), but he didn’t want to risk upsetting her. He wouldn’t ruin the moment.

It was the right call. When she pulled Vera back to get another good look at her, they were both rendered speechless for a moment, because Vera was giving them her first genuine smile. It was huge, and gummy, and brilliant; it lit up Vera’s entire face. Automatically, Will and Lyra beamed back, and that made Vera kick her feet happily again.

“You see?” Will said softly, his heart incredibly warm. “She thinks you’re the best. She’s happy, and she’s healthy, and it’s because you’re doing such a good job taking care of her.”

Lyra couldn’t deny her happiness or her health so Will thought he’d probably convinced her—at least for that moment. He hoped so, anyway.

* * *

 

It was much later, after they’d returned home, had dinner, fed Vera again, and put her to bed, that she felt up to talking about the meeting. Everybody had been very quiet over dinner; they all wanted to discuss the future and their plans, but all Lyra had offered up about the meeting was that she was unsure whether it had helped them or hurt them. Mary and Elaine didn’t push her for fear of upsetting her like she’d been before, and Malcolm—who knew nothing of her breakdown—sensed enough discomfort in the air to keep from saying much at all. Will was glad. He knew she’d talk about it when she wanted to, and he was right. Once they were in bed, she twisted her legs with his, gripped him tight beneath the covers, and said: “It was awful.” He waited, stroking up and down her spine, and she kept going after a shaky inhalation. “They had that CCD man with the vulture dæmon there, the head of the Magisterium, Father Phelan, the Bishop of Oxford, a man running the League of St. Alexander’s—which I guess was going to be heavily involved in their plan of brainwashing Vera—and a doctor for some reason.”

Will’s hands paused. “A doctor-doctor?”

“Yeah, like you, only _not_ like you because he was cowardly and…creepy. I don’t know why they had him there.”

The doctor being present troubled Will more than it troubled her. What would they need a doctor there for? She kept going without thinking much more of it, though, telling him all about the lies she’d had to weave, about how she’d ended up telling them that he was dead, too, and about the Church’s warning that she still couldn’t leave until they were _positive_ that the baby was really dead.

“So I’m not sure, Will,” she finished in a whisper. “If the witches’ part goes without any problems, I think we’ll be okay. But if not…I don’t know. I think they’ll take my lying about her death as an admission of guilt, almost. Like she _must_ be something frightening and dangerous if I tried to hide her.”

“Serafina will do what she set out to do. Don’t worry about that,” Will said sensibly. “And we’ll do what we have to do, too. If that’s finding a way to flee—we’ll find a way to flee. If that’s staying here for a bit until things die down, we’ll stay here until things die down.”

Lyra was quiet for a minute or so. She scooted up and pressed soft kisses against his neck, her legs weaving tighter with Will’s, and it felt so nice to have this unrushed moment with her that he wanted to intercept her lips and kiss her deeply, but he was very careful to follow her lead. He was letting her set the pace, and tonight, the pace seemed to be soft, gentle affection. He was more than happy with that. They hadn’t had time for much more than chaste goodnight kisses since Vera was born, so this felt like an extravagant luxury. 

“I don’t want you to leave me again,” she said—or rather breathed. It was so quiet that Will nearly missed it. But he paused and listened as she continued on. “It might be possible for the witches and Gyptians to smuggle you and your mum and Mary out the way they smuggled you in, no matter what the Church decides about me and Vera, but I couldn’t bear it. I thought that I could…because it would be the right thing…but after having to pretend that you and Vera had both…well, when you go back, Vera and I are coming with you. I’m not allowing us to get separated from each other ever again.”

That hadn’t even been an option in Will’s mind, and he told her as much. “That was never going to happen. I told you I’m not leaving you behind. Wherever you go, I’m going, too.”

And he was someone who had followed her down into the land of the dead, so of course he meant that. He’d followed her to what was ultimately hell, and he’d do it again if he had to. Nothing mattered in the world to him except the people in that cottage. He was prepared to do anything for them—anything.

* * *

They had to wait another three weeks or so to find out the outcome of Lyra’s performance for the Church. Serafina _finally_ returned, bringing with her something Lyra had desperately needed to see: a smile.

“As of right now,” she greeted them, taking Vera into her arms to cuddle at once, “the Church has left Svalbard’s shores and skies completely. Their alethiometrist was found dead of cardiac arrest at his study table, but before he passed, he was able to record information for the Church, including information confirming the tragic passing of Lyra Silvertongue’s daughter,” in contrast to her faux-mournful tone, she lifted Vera up and blew a raspberry on her belly. Vera performed her new party trick—falling into spirited, tinkling laughter. Serafina beamed; she hadn’t expected that. “You’re laughing already!”

“Isn’t it adorable?” Lyra heard herself brag. While Vera giggled, her dæmon—a colorful tropical bird of some sort—preened.

“She’s really proud of herself for it, too,” Will added, smiling. “She laughs all the time.”

Serafina was smiling at the baby as she continued giving them the information they’d been waiting ages for. “At first, they wanted to blame you for his death, but with the absence of evidence or even anything suspicious at all, and the confirmation from his medical records that he’d suffered from a cardiac condition all his life, they relented. They held a conference for weeks trying to decide what to do. Your book has caused such a fuss for them that quite a few wanted to dispose of you for that reason, but they knew it would only make things worse for them if the public found out. In the end, the decision was to let you go but keep a close eye on you. Which, of course, we’re not going to allow.”

Lyra was both relieved and worried. They had managed to trick the Church thus far, but now began the difficult part: they had to somehow keep Vera hidden from them. It seemed much more daunting now that it was a pressing reality. Maybe they just should have started a war.

“What are you thinking?” Will asked Serafina curiously.

She shifted Vera into a cradle. “Before I came back to you, I flew around Namibia to get an idea of the area. I was able to locate the door fairly easily once you gave me those directions, Mary,” she said, turning to address her. Mary smiled.

“Brilliant,” she said.

“I didn’t speak with the angel—his posture was hostile and I didn’t have time to win him over for the time being—but I think I found our solution. About two days off the coast of Namibia by boat—around six hours by zeppelin—there’s an unmarked island. Unmarked in this world, at least, but perhaps marked in yours, Will. I traveled to it and scoped it out. It’s got a tiny settlement with a population of around two hundred people. The government seems entirely independent and self-sustaining. There is a church on the island, but there doesn’t seem to be a strong religious presence outside of it. I spent three days there to get an idea of what the community is like; the people were friendly and courteous, and people aren’t always kind to witches.”

Lyra looked to Will. He had already looked at her.

“It’s close to the door—” he began.

“It’s somewhere the Church wouldn’t expect—” added Lyra.

“It’s probably our best bet,” Will realized, just as Lyra did.

She looked at Pantalaimon. The same question flowed through them. She turned to Serafina. “Were there other children there?”

“Was there a school?” Will added.

“Yes and yes. Not _many_ children, of course, with the population being so low, but I’d say around fifty or so. And there was a small school house.”

“Did you see babies Vera’s age?” Kirjava questioned.

“I didn’t, but I’m sure they’re there. I’m sure they’re just inside.”

That fact automatically made Lyra lean more towards this island than Svalbard. She desperately wanted her child to have peers to play with; she couldn’t imagine her own childhood without Roger, without her friends. It would have been painfully lonely and boring.

“You can’t go back to Oxford,” Will voiced the obvious, turning back to her and Pan.

Her heart twisted, but she was able to keep her emotions in check. “I know. Not yet, anyway. This island sounds nice. We can try it.” Lyra turned to face Malcolm. Her heart felt even heavier. “Malcolm?”

He smiled sadly. “Yes?”

She looked into his light eyes and she suddenly couldn’t imagine him not being there. She couldn’t imagine never seeing him again, or only seeing him once every decade or so. She didn’t know when it had happened—maybe it was on that boat, maybe it was during the months they’d been together in this cottage, maybe it was when he was putting that stupid damp cloth on her forehead when she was having Vera—but he had become part of her tiny family. She didn’t know what to say because of that. She wanted to ask him to come with them, but that felt selfish.

“What are you going to do?” she finally asked.

“Well, I don’t want to go back to Oxford yet. I have a feeling I’d only end up getting interrogated some way or another. I’d like to let things die down a bit first.”

Lyra leapt at the opportunity to say what she needed to. “Maybe you could come to the island with us. For a bit, you know, however long you want.”

Malcolm looked at Mary. “What are you going to do, Mary?”

Mary was unabashed. “Following them,” she said, pointing towards Will and Lyra. “Nothing nearly half as interesting is going to happen at home in my Oxford. I want to study the door so I need to be near it. Serafina, what is the zeppelin like that takes people from the island back to Namibia? Would we be able to ride it?”

“Certainly. I don’t think any of you would be recognized. Like I said, the Church doesn’t have a real presence on this island.”

Mary nodded. “Then I’m going to the island, too. I’ve got work to do—I don’t know exactly what yet, but I know that I do. I can feel it.”

Lyra understood her entirely because she felt that way, too. She could only hope that Malcolm did also. She looked back at him and waited. He was looking at Asta; they were having a silent conversation. Finally, he turned back to Will and Lyra.

“If it’s okay with you—and we won’t be a bother—I think Asta and I might enjoy island life for a while.”

Relieved, Lyra beamed. When she glanced at Will, he was smiling, too. She knew that for both her and Will—who had been deprived of any sort of extended family growing up—it was unbelievably nice to think that Vera would have family other than just them and Elaine. And that’s what Malcolm, Mary, and Serafina were: family.

For the first time in a long while, Lyra was able to hold a specific image of the future in her mind, one where her daughter would grow up safe and loved. She knew the fight was far from over, but for now, things felt settled. And in the midst of the exhaustion of new motherhood, _settled_ felt suddenly like a wonderful thing for life to be.


	8. cut clean from the dream

Pantalaimon and Kirjava were on their way home when they spotted something moving in the night. It was Pan who saw it first, but by the time he’d darted in front of Kirjava to bring her to a halt, she’d spotted it, too. She fell eerily still. Pantalaimon’s fur bristled. They listened to the rustling of the leaves a couple paces ahead and watched the figure move, low to the ground, crouching…a feral dog? There weren’t any native land mammals on the island, and in the five years they’d lived there, Pan and Lyra had only seen the occasional wild dog or cat.

A breeze rich with sea salt and humidity rustled the leaves around them. With it came the scent of the crouched figure. Kirjava and Pantalaimon relaxed simultaneously.

“ _Maximus_!” Kirjava snapped at once, her voice jarring and commanding. The low figure—which Pantalaimon now realized was Vera and Max darting from bush to bush—scurried quickly into the underbrush. Kirjava shot in after them. Pantalaimon hurried over to help, but by the time he’d reached them, Kirjava had already gotten her teeth into Maximus. She pulled the dæmon from the brush by his floppy ear; a Basset Hound hadn’t been the smartest form to take.

“ _Noooo_ ,” Vera moaned, stamping at once from behind the bush. Pantalaimon leveled a stern look her way. She was in her nightie, which meant she’d snuck out of bed. Pan was horrified, and he wasn’t even sure what the most terrifying aspect of her escapade was: Vera running off on her own at night or Vera climbing down from their home alone. Their house was built up in the trees, meaning Vera must have scaled down the rope ladder all by herself in the pitch black. Will was going to have a fit.

“What are you playing at?” Pan demanded, staring sternly at their child. “It’s the middle of the night! Where do you think you’re going?!”

“You’re _filthy_!” Kirjava added, furious. She appraised Vera and Max distastefully. They _were_ covered in an impressive amount of dirt.

Vera sulked and didn’t answer. At her feet, Max turned into a rattlesnake and shook his tail angrily. She didn’t respond well to being yelled at and never had, and Pan knew that, but in his concern, he’d disregarded it. All he could think about was Vera slipping and falling from the ladder, or getting captured, or getting lost in the dark and wandering around and around all alone, frightened…

“ _Where. Were. You. Going_ ,” Kirjava hissed, channeling much more fury into her words than Pantalaimon had managed.

In response to Kirjava’s livid tone, Vera stuck her lip out in a pout. Her blue eyes went wide, her dark brow furrowed in a wounded expression. When her bottom lip trembled—just once—and her eyes filled with tears, Pantalaimon felt himself wavering. And when Max changed into a fluffy bunny, Kirjava began to waver, too. But the situation was just too dangerous to forget entirely.

“You’d better tell us so we can help you,” Pantalaimon told her gently. “Because when Will and Lyra find out, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

Max clearly saw the sense in that (or maybe he was just more intimidated than Vera because he knew Kirjava _could_ bite _him_ ). “We wanted to see Nana.”

Kirjava and Pantalaimon exchanged a skeptical look. “In the middle of the night? Try again, Maximus.”

“We _did_ ,” he persisted earnestly. “We made her something, look—” he turned effortlessly into a hummingbird and flew up to the pocket of Vera’s nightie. He dove in and came back out a moment later pulling a little fragile bracelet made from tiny links of colorful paper. Sure enough, when Max flew it down to dangle in front of Kirjava and Pan, Pantalaimon saw the word _Nana_ written on it, each letter prominent on four different links.  He glanced helplessly at Kirjava. How was he supposed to be angry at Vera and Max now?

Kirjava still managed it. “And you couldn’t wait until morning to give it to her?” she demanded, cross. “You see Elaine every day. Why couldn’t you just give it to her tomorrow?”

“Because,” Vera said, and here her eyes _really_ began to swim in tears, “Daddy and Mummy said she has to go to the other world soon or else she’ll die. She’s going away and I didn’t want her to go away before I gave her her present…are you going to tell them?”

Pantalaimon was confused. He and Kirjava had been gone for maybe a half day—they’d met Poly’s dæmon on the other side of the island to get the stack of letters he brought weekly—but last they’d seen Elaine, she’d been a bit under the weather, but not so emergent that she’d have to run back to Will’s world at once.

Kirjava was deeply concerned, but she was trying to hide it. Pantalaimon moved closer to her side and leaned against her soft fur.

“Mummy and Daddy told you this?” Kirjava demanded.

“I heard them,” she said.

Pan understood. “You eavesdropped.”

“I what?” Vera asked curiously.

“You listened to secrets,” Max reminded her quietly.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “No! It wasn’t a secret I don’t think.”

“They _were_ whispering, and we were supposed to be asleep,” Max reminded her.

“Oh yeah…” repeated Vera.

“When did they say she had to go back?” Kirjava asked next.

Vera pursed her lips as she thought. “I think tomorrow.”

Pantalaimon rubbed against Kirjava’s side soothingly. Her concern was obvious now. She looked over at him.

“I’m going to go check on her,” she said. “Can you get them back home?”

“Yes,” Pantalaimon nodded. He bumped noses with her and nuzzled her cheek. “Be safe.”

After Kirjava had been swallowed up by the dark forest, Pantalaimon turned to their child. He nudged Max forward.

“Go on,” he said firmly. “Back home. Let’s go.”

Vera didn’t argue with him. She and Max walked forward and Pantalaimon followed closely behind, to make sure they didn’t wander off when he wasn’t looking. He watched nervously as Vera climbed up the rope ladder to the treehouse deck, Max flying beside her. As soon as she was safely above, he scurried fast up the main tree support of the first area of the tree house. He met Vera inside the living room. She was taking her muddy shoes off and setting them on the tray left there for that purpose.

“Hurry up,” Pan said when he realized she was dawdling. “If your parents know you’ve gone…”

“They don’t,” Vera said at once.

“And how do you know that?” Pantalaimon demanded.

“‘Cause you’d feel Mummy’s worry, wouldn’t you?” she pointed out wisely. He supposed she had a point. He _was_ close enough to Lyra to feel what she was feeling again, and he wasn’t getting anything but peace from her. She was still asleep.

“Still—hurry up,” he said.

The treehouse had four different areas connected by rope bridges. The first—the structure connected to the rope ladder and accessible from the ground—was the living room. The second area—the same small, square shape as the first—was an office area. A short walk away across a second rope bridge was Lyra and Will’s bedroom. And finally, after passing through that area and crossing another short bridge, though this bridge was covered and made of wood rather than rope, was Vera’s room, small with no ground access and tiny, sealed windows, made so that the only way to access it was by going past Lyra and Will first (made to keep her safe). A small building on the ground held the kitchen, and there was one tiny, functional bathroom tucked just off Will and Lyra’s room. It was their home when they were in Lyra’s world, and Pantalaimon—being a pine marten—adored it. When they were in Will’s world, they lived in a flat in Cape Town. Their life was normal and peaceful as a whole; here, though, they were constantly on edge it seemed.

Vera, of course, was oblivious to that tension. She was a cherished child, and because of that, she was carefree and confident. She had no idea the danger of Lyra’s world, no idea of the bounty that would be on her head should someone realize she hadn’t died at birth like Lyra had lied and said she had. She was as comfortable in their treetop home as she was in their modern flat. But Vera could feel at home anywhere.

“Be careful,” Pantalaimon reminded her now, watching her skirt dangerously close to the railing of the rope bridge leading to the office. Max swooped low and snatched an apple out of a fruit bowl as they walked through the office, and Pan was too tired to say anything about it. Vera stuffed it down into the pocket of her nightie as they set across the rope bridge leading to her parents’ room. She slowed down a bit now, not wanting to wake her parents.

When they tiptoed into Will and Lyra’s bedroom, Pantalaimon saw that they were still curled up around each other and sleeping deeply. The fractured moonlight filtering in from the trees fanned over their faces from the many windows. Pantalaimon had planned on leading Vera and Max back to their own bed, but Vera climbed right up onto her parents’ bed and slid beneath the covers, curling up to Will’s back. She yawned deeply. Max—a pine marten like Pantalaimon now—walked over and leaned tiredly against Pan’s side. Pantalaimon sighed.

“We’re going to talk about this more in the morning,” he warned Max and Vera quietly.

“Okay,” Max said. He’d already jumped up on the bed and was waiting for Pantalaimon to join him. Pantalaimon leapt up and curled around the smaller pine marten, snuggling him as he did nearly every night, and Max drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

“I just wanted to give Nana her bracelet,” Vera yawned.

“I know,” Pantalaimon said. “But you can’t sneak out. It isn’t safe. Especially not for you.”

She wouldn’t understand that—how could she? But they would have to find a way to explain it to her. They couldn’t risk her sneaking out ever again.

* * *

 

Vera crawling into their bed in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual.

The amount of dirt she’d tracked into the bed was.

“This is unbelievable,” Will murmured to himself, careful to keep his voice low. Lyra and Vera were still asleep. He could feel the gritty texture of sand and dirt underneath his legs, and when he threw the blankets off and peered down at the sheets, he was even more confused. The loose dirt and crunched up leaves hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep. Lyra hadn’t gone anywhere last night—she’d been warm in his arms the entire time—and Pantalaimon and Kirjava always groomed their fur before going beneath the covers, meaning…

His suspicions were confirmed when he carefully peeled the blanket off his daughter. The soles of her feet were black with dirt and mud. Her dæmon, a white ferret-looking creature tucked against her throat, was just as dirty as she was. Will was immediately concerned. Where had she been last night? She’d been clean when she went to sleep.

“Kirjava,” he hissed, searching the bed. She was usually in a tight ball with Pan and Max if she wasn’t curled up near Will, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and nor was Pantalaimon. They should’ve made it back from meeting with Poly’s dæmon by now. What was going on?

“Lyra,” he whispered. He reached over Vera—she’d somehow managed to worm her way between him and Lyra—and touched her golden hair gently. He stroked his fingers through it, his fingertips pressing gently to her sleep-warmed cheek afterwards. “Lyra…”

She stirred. Her eyes moved a few times beneath her eyelids before she finally opened them and looked at him. She frowned at his concerned expression.

“What’s wrong?” she asked at once.

Will sat up and moved the blanket back again, pointing at Vera’s dirty feet, and then at Max. Then, he gestured around them, indicating to the absence of their dæmons. Lyra frowned. And then she poked Vera gently on the nose.

“Vera Parry,” she demanded, less concerned with waking her than Will had been. “You wake up right now.”

Vera rolled over—Max scurried up to rest above her head where he wouldn’t get smashed against one of her parents—and snuggled up to Lyra’s chest. She yawned into her mum’s top and began to drift back off, snuggly and happy, but Lyra poked her shoulder.

“Vera, you wake up. Why are you so dirty? Where have you been?” The thought occurred to Lyra as soon as it occurred to Will. They locked panicked eyes. “Did you…sneak out?!”

Surely they would’ve stirred if she snuck through their bedroom and left their treehouse. Surely they wouldn’t have slept through that…

But they had because Vera yawned and said: “I wanted to go see Nana.”

Will’s heart skipped a beat in his chest. Lyra was baffled. “You left in the middle of the night to go see Nana? _Why_?”

Will cared less about the whys. He was brimming with outrage and fear. “You left our home? Alone? In the middle of the night? You crawled down the rope ladder?”

Vera couldn’t see his intimidating gaze because her face was still hidden in her mum’s bosom, but Will glared fiercely anyway.

“I made her a bracelet,” Vera said sleepily. “I wanted to give it to her before she had to go away ‘cause she’s ill. Pan and Kirjava caught us.”

“Who told you she’s ill?” Lyra asked, baffled. “Nana’s not ill.”

“Yes,” Vera persisted. “You and Daddy said she would die if she didn’t go back right away!”

“What?” Lyra said. “We didn’t!”

“We most certainly did _not_ say that,” Will said, his voice trembling with anger. “And you could have woken us and asked us about it if you were worried. There is no excuse to _ever_ leave this treehouse without me or your mum at your side! You could’ve fallen and _died_! You could have been seen! You could have been kidnapped! You could have gotten lost! I can’t believe you, Vera! I can’t believe you’d be so foolish!”

She looked over her shoulder at Will, her eyes wide with surprise at his anger. Her lips parted. Will watched as her expression morphed from surprise to injury. And then her eyes welled with tears. Oh no.

“You _did_ say that! You _did_! I heard you! I was napping and you were talking to Mummy and you said Nana would have to go back or she’d die—”

“We were talking in general. We all have to go back every now and then or we’ll die, Vera. We didn’t mean Nana was going back _right then_ ,” Lyra explained.

“You said she was ill! You did!” she persisted.

“No, we were saying that she hasn’t felt well lately and that _if_ she got genuinely ill, she’d have a hard time fighting the illness off since we’ve spent longer than usual here in this world.”

“You should have _asked us_ ,” Will repeated. He realized most of his anger was from fear. He was choked up over what could have happened. While he was sleeping! He felt like a horrible father. He wasn’t sure what to do, either. Did he punish her? Yell at her? Explain why she couldn’t sneak out? What did he need to do to make sure she never did this again? Certainly not for the first time, his path as a father felt murky.

Luckily, Lyra was every bit as impulsive as Will was deliberate. She was going to act and she was going to act now; Will could see it in the firm line of her lips. She gently pulled Vera back—she’d crawled into Lyra’s embrace again and hid her face—and held her face in her hands.

“Vera, you are _never, ever_ allowed to sneak off by yourself. Not in this world or any other. It’s dangerous. You could have fallen, or gotten lost, or stolen!”

“I wouldn’t’ve!”

“Hush! Yes, you could have! You won’t be going to the beach at all today because of what you did. You’re going to have to stay here all day.”

Vera gasped, horrified. She scrambled up. “No! But, no, Mummy! Mal said he would help me finish my sandcastle! We’re going to build trapdoors and everything! _Daddy_!”

She turned her pained eyes on Will, appealing for his support. But Will couldn’t give it to her.

“Mum is right. If you sneak out at night, you can stay in all day. You can’t do that ever again, Vera. Not ever.”

She threw herself down onto the mattress and began weeping dramatically as if her parents had just sentenced her to death. Will sighed. Lyra looked momentarily uncertain, but he nodded at her once to show he thought she’d done the right thing. There needed to be some sort of consequence for her sneaking out so she wouldn’t do it again, and it made logical sense to keep her inside all day if she snuck out at night. He guessed, anyway. He had never been disciplined before. Raising yourself left little room for timeouts. And he knew Lyra’s ‘discipline’ growing up had largely been either half-hearted complaints from scholars who never actually followed through on what they said or random beatings from the Steward. Both, Will felt, were probably ineffective. Of all the struggles he and Lyra had gone through as they figured out parenting, disciplining was certainly the hardest. It was made all the more difficult by Vera herself because she was an incredibly sweet, gentle-hearted child, with quite sensitive emotions, but at the same time she could become every bit as stubborn, curious, and driven as her parents could when she got her mind set on something. Will and Lyra had to constantly dance on the line between being _too_ firm and upsetting her or being too soft and risking her ignoring them entirely. It was trickier than Will could have ever imagined.

Of course, she was acting as if they’d been much too firm right now, but Will felt confident that she’d survive one day in the treehouse. He reached out and brushed her dark wavy hair from her wet face, and as soon as he did, she crawled up into his lap and locked her arms around him, continuing to sob heavily into his chest. Will cradled her as if she were still a tiny baby and kissed her teary face. As dramatic as he knew she was being, it still made his heart ache to see her upset.

“Daddy, I don’t _want_ to…” she wept.

“I know,” he told her, and he did. “But you have to. Because you know you’re not allowed to leave this treehouse without an adult, and you did, anyway.”

“B-B-But _why_?!” she demanded, sobbing even harder now that she realized Will wasn’t going to give into her. “Why c-c-can’t I?! W-When w-we’re at our o-other home I-I can go p-p-play alone!”

She was referring to the indoor playground area inside their flat building back in Will’s world, in Cape Town. It was only a few feet from their flat door so they often let her head out ahead of them. Somebody always went down to keep an eye on her, but they _did_ let her make the journey on her own. And, in fact, now that he was thinking about it, he realized they often let her walk alone to Mary, Malcolm, and his mum’s flat (just one door down from theirs). He understood why she was confused.

He looked at Lyra, silently imploring her to come closer so she could help him explain this to their daughter. He didn’t want Vera to feel like their rules were arbitrary, but he wasn’t sure where to begin. How much detail did they give her? As soon as Lyra was sitting beside Will—and Vera had moved over to sit half in her lap and half in Will’s—Will said: “Are you a bit confused, Vera, because we let you go alone to Nana’s in the other world?”

She looked up at him and sniffed. She leaned into Lyra’s hand when her mum reached up to wipe her tears away.

“Yes,” she said pitifully.

“Our other home isn’t up in the air,” Lyra pointed out. “We’re just so worried about you climbing down all by yourself in the dark.”

Will waited for her to say more, but an _and…_ never came. He took that to mean she wasn’t ready to tell Vera about the Church yet. He stuck to the one reason she’d given, too.

“Remember when Mummy slipped and fell climbing down?” he reminded Vera. “And I had to stitch up her head?”

Vera had never forgotten it. She’d only been three at the time, but she had brought it up frequently throughout her life. All the blood had made quite an impact on her. She nodded gravely.

“Yes. There was _so much_ blood. I was so scared! And—and—and—” Vera stuttered over her words as she rushed to get out what she was thinking. She was often so excited to speak that she got stuck on one particular word. “And—and there was blood all in the bed, everywhere, and Mummy was shaking like…” Vera trailed off and started shivering like she was in arctic weather in nothing but her nightie. Will’s heart had dropped to his toes as soon as she’d said ‘bed’. He kept his face impassive as he corrected his daughter. She was mixing up two separate times, and he wished she hadn’t brought up the second.

“I’m talking about when Mummy hit her head. And if _Mummy_ could fall from the ladder, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Vera repeated gravely, hanging onto every word now. Vera turned to look at her mum. Will knew she idolized Lyra, and he could see that framing it that way made much more sense to her. “I could,” she finally decided.

Will glanced at Lyra from the corner of his eye. She had stopped smiling, but she didn’t look too upset, so he rushed to pave over Vera’s innocent mix-up.

“So are we going to sneak out in the night ever again?” he summarized.

Vera shook her head emphatically. “ _No_. We are not.”

Will glanced at Maximus. He arched an eyebrow. Maximus nodded. “Never again, we promise.”

“Great,” Will said, and then he glanced again at Lyra, and he wanted terribly to be alone with her. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t upset. “How about you go _carefully_ to the office and stack Mummy’s library books by the doorway so we don’t forget to take them back.”

“Okay!” Vera and Max chorused. Vera scooped tiny bunny Max up into her arms and scrambled from the bed. Will watched her until she was safely over the rope bridge and in the office, and then he turned to look at Lyra. He could tell from her downcast eyes that she didn’t want to talk about it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t comfort her. He bridged the space between them and reached out for her, pulling her into his arms. She melted into his embrace. He closed his eyes and focused on the sweet smell of her hair and the softness of her palms as she stroked his back beneath his shirt. He kissed her cheekbone and then her lips. He was so wrapped up in her that he hardly noticed their dæmons returning to them, and when he did, it was because Kirjava crawled boldly into Lyra’s lap. She must have sensed a deeper level of sadness than Will had to have done that.

“I can’t believe she remembers it,” Pantalaimon murmured. Lyra made a soft noise of agreement.

Will could. It had been traumatizing, especially for a three-year-old. It had been traumatizing for _Will_. At the time, he hardly had more idea of what was happening than Vera did. He and Lyra hadn’t known she was pregnant at that time, after all—not until she woke in a cold sweat trembling in an ever-growing puddle of blood. They had learned—horribly—a new fact of their strange inter-world life: it wasn’t possible to carry a child in another world. They wouldn’t make the mistake of trying ever again. Any short-lived dreams they’d had of giving Vera a sibling had died that night, and Will knew it was probably for the best considering the dangerous, secretive life they had to live.

“C’mon,” Lyra said finally, pulling back from Will’s arms. “Let’s go down and make breakfast. Do you think I was too hard on her earlier?”

“You know I don’t. We have to punish her somehow, don’t we?”

“I _think_ so…” Lyra trailed off uncertainly. “I mean, I guess we don’t _have_ to do anything since we’re the parents, but it sort of feels like we’re supposed to?”

“Yeah, I thought so, too,” he agreed. “Though I don’t know, it sort of seemed like she ‘got it’ just now, don’t you think? She seemed to understand why she can’t sneak off.”

“She did…” Lyra looked up at the ceiling as she mulled that over, her hand stroking through Pan’s fur as she did. “Well, I guess we could give her a warning. You know, remind her that it’s not allowed, and if she does it again, _then_ we punish her. Can we do that?”

Will shrugged. “I guess so. Who’s going to tell us we can’t?”

“Fair point. Let’s see how she’s acting over breakfast and then we can decide.”

“Okay,” he agreed. They climbed from the bed, and as Lyra pulled on her dressing gown, a horrible thought occurred to Will. “Lyra…she’s only five and she’s already sneaking out. What do you think she’s going to do by the time she’s a teenager?”

Lyra shook her head. “I just don’t think about it. Think about the stuff _we_ did even before we were teenagers…sneaking between worlds and all that…let’s hope she lives a milder life.”

For the first time in a number of months, Will thought about the prophecy and about the promise the angel at the door had made him make. It haunted him year after year, but he’d always felt like it was a matter they wouldn’t have to deal with until much later in Vera’s life. But maybe it would come about sooner than he’d thought. The worry filled him with dread.

“Are you all right?” Lyra asked quietly, concerned. She set her hand on his arm.

“Yeah,” he said, and he hated that his voice sounded a bit gruff. All that with the angel all those years ago had upset him then and still upset him now. “Let’s go see if Vera’s feeling any remorse.”

* * *

 

She was, and so they decided to give her one more chance. Will felt fairly confident that she wouldn’t ever do it again, especially since they’d promised they would make her stay in the house if she ever did. She didn’t enjoy being cooped up; she liked to wander around the beaches with Max, playing mermaids or building things, and when she wasn’t doing that, she was perusing the tiny island library, usually every section _but_ the children’s section. Will and Lyra tried to give her as many freedoms as possible—because they weren’t sure what a childhood without them would look like, both having had more freedom than most—but it was nerve-wracking in Lyra’s world.

Vera spent that morning on the shore of the closest beach with Malcolm, happily working on her ‘hot air balloon sailboat’ which, to Will’s eyes, just looked like a crude canoe thus far. After that, he and Lyra went with her to his mum and Mary’s, where she _finally_ delivered her bracelet, sat in her nana’s lap all throughout lunch, and then quite happily helped Mary with her ‘experiment’ (Mary put her to work and had her alphabetize her files).

By the time they made it to the library, Vera was staunchly refusing her necessity for an afternoon nap and making a pretty good case for herself. They let her roam the library while they sat on a sofa near the door; they could mostly see her no matter where in the library she went, as the entire thing was just one small square room with towering shelves along the walls, but she felt important when they let her wander off “alone”.

While she perused the encyclopedias for God knows what as she did every day, Will delighted in Lyra’s presence. He deeply enjoyed sitting here with her, their daughter happy and inquisitive as she sorted through books a few feet away, and for him, it didn't get any better than this. And as he leaned his cheek against the top of Lyra's head and wrapped an arm around her, he had to marvel at the fact that—even after five years of being with her every single day—each day still felt like a gift. He didn’t think he would ever grow complacent, would ever forget the ache he’d felt in his chest when they said goodbye, would _ever_ forget the despair of living an entire decade thinking he would never see her again or touch her again. He often felt like the living embodiment of _grateful_. Half a decade had come and gone and all Lyra’s most annoying attributes still filled him with partial relief. Because yes, she could get haughty, but he was just so glad she was _there_ to get haughty in the first place. She had told him something similar.

And their daughter, and their life as a little family…those were separate blessings on top of it. If Heaven existed, he was certain he had found it.

“Vera,” Lyra called suddenly, lifting her head from Will’s shoulder. “Pick a different book, not that one.”

Vera—holding an adult novel with questionable cover art—looked bewildered. Her parents never censored the books she checked out, and thus far, they read everything she picked dutifully, no matter how boring. Her most recent library haul had consisted of a book on foreign embassies, a book about the opium trade, and a self-help book about addiction. Vera could only read a small percentage of the words in each book, but that didn’t seem to quell her interest. And currently, her interest was certainly piqued.

“What? Why? I like it, it’s got a purple sofa on the cover!” she exclaimed. As she said that, she lifted the book to study it better, and then she peered at it closer. Lyra sighed at Will’s side.

“I tried to avoid this,” she hissed at him.

He didn’t understand. But then Vera came running over, Max slithering behind her in one of his preferred forms (a massive anaconda), and shoved the book beneath their noses. She was shocked, sheepish, enthralled—she didn’t seem to know what to feel.

“Mummy!” she said, alarmed. “That lady and that man are touching each other’s _dæmons_!”

Lyra snatched the book from Vera’s hand, peered casually at the cover, and then set the book face-down beside her. “So they are. Odd. Go choose another book.”

For such an excellent liar, she wasn’t going a good job with subtlety. Naturally, Vera didn’t budge.

“But why are they doing that? Are they allowed to do that?”

Will exchanged a quick look with Lyra. He never touched Pan and Lyra never touched Kirjava in Vera’s presence—that’d be nearly as inappropriate as having sex somewhere where she could witness it—and so he had never anticipated needing to have this conversation with Vera. Today was holding quite a few firsts that Will wasn’t prepared for.

“I saw a book on sea life over there, with beautiful watercolor pictures—”

“ _Mummy_ ,” Vera whined, interrupting her. “I want to know about _that book_.”

Will looked at Lyra. “Shouldn’t have made a fuss about it,” he muttered under his breath. Lyra ignored him.  

“Well, of course you do, Vera,” Lyra said, a…mischievous smile cropping up. Oh no. “Daddy would be glad to tell you all about it. Will?”

And before he could say a thing, she rose and headed towards the toilets, leaving Will with a very expectant five-year-old. She scampered up onto the sofa and leaned against Will’s side. He wrapped her up in his arms and kissed her hair.

“Not to change the subject, but _I_ saw a book on sword-fighting.”

Vera—who loved swords nearly as much as she loved mermaids—perked up a bit at that.

“The blue one? ‘Cause I had that one yesterday.”

“It was actually a couple months ago that you checked the blue one out, but no, a different one. Shall we go get it?”

“No, I want _that_ book,” she persisted.

Will forced himself to remain cool and casual. He picked the book up and handed it to Vera. “Okay. There you go. Shall we get any others or is that enough?”

She looked up at him. He met her light, curious eyes. They looked so bright beneath her straight black blows ( _his_ brows). “I can get this book now?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Mummy just doesn’t like it. She’s read it before, you see, and found it terribly boring.”

Vera’s entire demeanor changed. She hopped off the sofa at once.

“Where are you going?” Will asked, amused, knowing precisely where she was going.

“To put it back,” she said. And sure enough, she darted back over to where she’d got it from, checked the spine to see where it was shelved exactly, and slid it back into its previous spot. She turned to face Will afterwards. “WHERE’S THE SWORD BOOK?” she yelled.

Will pointed towards the shelf he’d seen it on, and she turned and headed that way. Will was feeling smug when Lyra returned.

“What?” she asked suspiciously, eying his expression.

“I think I just out-lied a liar.”

She scoffed. “You couldn’t outlie me! What do you mean?”

“Vera put the book back.”

“By herself?”

“Yes. She went to get a book on swords instead,” he affirmed, pointing towards where Vera was looking now.

“How?”

“I told her you thought the book was boring and that’s why you didn’t want her to get it. She had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever once she learned that _Mummy_ thought it was boring,” he said.

“That’s…yeah, that was pretty good,” she admitted. She shook her head. “I sort of panicked. I just saw her holding it and I knew it would start her asking questions and I’m not ready for her to know anything about that sort of stuff. I’m not ready for her to be sneaking out!”

Will understood exactly what she meant and what she was feeling. He watched Vera study the pages of a heavy, complicated looking text, her dark, tangled hair falling over her shoulders, and felt his heart pang. “I can’t believe how fast five years came and went.”

“In another five, she’ll be ten,” Lyra lamented.

Will’s heart lurched. He didn’t want to think about it. He was cherishing her early childhood so much; he didn’t want it to go away for good. (And then, once she was grown up, that was it—he’d never be the parent of a small child ever again, and that was sad, too. He never could’ve imagined how well he’d take to fatherhood. Nothing he’d done in his life had ever felt so _right—_ except maybe loving Lyra.)

“Daddy, _look_!”

Will had been meeting Lyra’s deep gaze, but Vera didn’t care for his turned head: she clambered up into his lap, and the book she was holding jabbed Will in his chest. He winced and turned his attention to his daughter. She lifted the large, hardback book and nearly poked his eye out. He dodged it just in time. A second later, he was staring at a photoset of a man fencing. At the top, it said “Parry Positions”. Vera moved the book closer to Will in her excitement, inadvertently smacking his nose with the opened pages.

“That’s _us_!” she said excitedly, her voice trembling with discovery. “P-A-R-R-Y! We’re a kind of sword!”

Will gently moved the book down, and when he saw Vera’s exuberant beam, he melted a bit.

“Sort of,” he told her. “A parry is a move in fencing. That’s fencing there, see? See the kind of sword they’re using?”

Vera nodded eagerly.

“And what they’re doing in the photo is parrying. That’s when you block an attack.”

Vera liked that a lot. Her hand moved unconsciously across her body as she looked at the photo, mimicking the move pictured. From the corner of his eye, Will saw Lyra fight back an amused smile.

“‘Cause no one attacks us,” Vera decided, and then she looked up at Will. “No one attacks my daddy.”

It was an interesting comment. She ran off to give the book to the librarian to scan, leaving Will pondering over her comment. She didn’t know anything about their history or _her_ history. He wondered if she’d noticed how he sometimes intimidated people. He was told he was fierce, but he just thought he was sensible. People ought to act right, and if they didn’t, he wasn’t afraid to say something about it and never had been. What did that look like to his daughter, he wondered?

They left the library with their newest haul— _A History of Sword Fighting, Tree of Yesterday,_ and _Tsunami: The Killing Sea_ —and set for home. Despite Vera’s vehement protests, she _was_ tired, and Will had to carry her after a few minutes. They were passing by the schoolhouse when Vera tugged on Will’s collar and said: “Stop!”. He wasn’t sure why he obeyed, but he did, and then he and Lyra turned to look at what Vera was looking at: a group of kids on the playground. Will realized their mistake at once. They had told Vera she wasn’t yet ready for school, but there, in front of them, were kids clearly Vera’s age.

The best defense was a good offense, so Lyra said brightly: “That’ll be you soon, Vera, so you best read up!”

Her little cheek was still resting against Will’s shoulder in her exhaustion, but he could tell she was extremely interested in the school. “Soon? Tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow-tomorrow but…soon!” Lyra said, and even Will wasn’t sure if she was lying. Surely that was a decision they’d make together, but she sounded so certain that he wondered for a moment. It appeased Vera. She snuggled closer to Will, tucked her little nose at his neck, and yawned. He moved on past the school, past the shops, through the path winding through the woods, and to their house. They stepped into the ground-level room—their kitchen—and Will lowered Vera on the sofa underneath the far window. She would nap there; she was too big now for him to scale the ladder with her in his arms. Lyra draped a blanket over her, eased her shoes off her dirty feet, and then shook her head.

“She must have been barefoot last night.”

“Almost certainly,” Will agreed, annoyed. “She’ll need a bath tonight.”

Lyra groaned. “Oh, can’t we just let her swim in the ocean? That’s good enough, right?”

“No. She did that the last time she was meant to have a bath. She’s filthy,” he insisted.

Lyra leaned over their sleeping daughter and sniffed her hair. “Well, I think she smells fine.”

“I didn’t say she smelled, I just said she needs a proper bath, and she does,” argued Will. “I’ll fight the battle with her.”

Lyra was stuck on this argument. “But if she doesn’t smell why does she need a bath?”

“Because she’s _filthy_ ,” he repeated, growing vexed. He pointed at her dirty soles again, and then he pulled the blanket back to show her grubby hands. 

Lyra’s eyes narrowed slightly, and her nose scrunched a bit, and he thought she’d argue some more. So he said: “Okay, going by that logic, why do _you_ bathe regularly?”

She shrugged. “‘Cause I like it. If I didn’t, I might not—at least not if I didn’t smell, anyway. Vera hates it.”

“She also hates immunization jabs, most every form of protein in one’s diet, and sleeping in her own bed,” he reminded her. “We still make her do those things.”

“Because jabs keep her alive, protein keeps her healthy, and us having a child-free bed a couple times a week keeps _us_ from madness.”

Will nodded firmly. “Yes. And baths keep her clean and healthy. Think of all the bacteria that gets on her throughout an average day.”

She considered that. “I suppose so. I _do_ think your world is a bit over-zealous with the bathing thing though, Will.”

And he thought hers was a bit _under-_ zealous. They could agree to disagree, but Will wouldn’t let his daughter get staph infection just because she found baths ‘boring’. Despite their brief argument, he reached out and pulled Lyra into his arms. If she was irritated at him at all, it didn’t show; she leaned into his embrace and pushed her hands up the back of his shirt. He rubbed down her back and lowered his face to kiss her shoulder.

“She needs a bath,” he mumbled between kisses. “With soap. And clean water. I have a medical degree.”

“Oh, fine,” she allowed. “But I want financial veto power then since I’ll soon be a doctor of economics. It’s not fair that you can pull the ‘doctor’ card all the time.”

“Sure. Have it,” he allowed. “But if you don’t finish that thesis, you won’t _have_ a ‘doctor card’ to pull…”

“I’m going to! I was waiting for my letters to get back, and now they’re back, so I’m going to finish it, and it’ll be ready by the time Kaisa returns to bring mail back to Dame Hannah.”

She said that, but she wasn’t making any move to separate from him. Her body was saying something quite different from what her words were. Finally, after kissing her for at least five minutes more, Will gently disentangled his hands from her hair and looked down at her. The flush to her cheeks made him want to crush his lips back without saying a word, but they couldn’t go up and leave Vera alone, and they didn’t have any privacy down here, so he didn’t need to indulge the mood.

“This is a funny way of working on your thesis.”

“I’m brainstorming.”

“Ah,” he said. He held her hips and leaned down to kiss her swiftly, and once he’d done that, he stepped back. The air felt cold as it rushed to fill the space her body had just occupied. “Let’s brainstorm together tonight.”

“Good idea,” she said seriously.

* * *

 

“No,” Pan said, nudging Lyra’s paper with his nose. “There. Your citation is wonky.”

Lyra scoffed automatically. She brushed her hair back behind her ears impatiently. “Is not!”

“You didn’t even look! It is _so_!” Pantalaimon persisted. “Do you want to be done or do you want to do it right? You know Dame Hannah will just send it back if she thinks we didn’t try our best.”

“Yeah, I know _that_ ,” muttered Lyra. She was tired and she felt like she’d been at her desk for _ages_. She wanted to join Will and Vera in the sitting room; she could hear them laughing together as they worked on a puzzle, and she wanted to be part of it. She squirmed impatiently in her seat and huffed. “Fine, _where_?”

Pantalaimon set his paw over the spot he meant, and Lyra—leaning over to peer at it—realized at once that he was right. She _had_ made a mistake. With a heavy sigh, she drew a neat line through it and referred back to her notes to correct it. By the time she finished that, her daughter was at her side. Vera was leaning against Lyra and studying her explosion of papers and books with interest.

“Did you finish your puzzle?” Lyra asked her, reaching her right arm out to wrap it around Vera. Vera snuggled closer to her. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Making dinner. Yes, it was a starfish.” She sounded disappointed. She liked to put puzzles together without the reference photos so she was surprised by the image it created at the end. She had clearly wished for something other than a starfish.

“Oh? What were you hoping for?”

“A swordfish. I never had one of those,” she answered. There was a pause as she studied Lyra’s desk. “Can I have that, Mummy?”

She was pointing at one of Lyra’s fountain pens. Lyra shrugged and reached for the pen, passing it to Vera.

“Sure.”

Vera bounced on the balls of her feet, pleased. She capped and uncapped the pen while Lyra began putting her final draft in order so she could type it up on an ordinator. She was about thirty-five pages in when Vera spoke again.

“Can I have _this_?” she inquired. Lyra glanced her way distractedly: she was holding a notebook.

“I suppose,” Lyra allowed, turning back to her thesis.

Even _more_ pleased, Vera tucked it under her arm. Lyra sorted up to page fifty-three, and then…

“Can I have _this_?”

Lyra turned to face Vera. She was holding an ink eraser in her hands.

“What are you planning to do with all of this?” Lyra asked, confused. She let Vera have the ink eraser anyway, but she waited for an answer. Vera blinked.

“For school tomorrow,” she explained.

“Ah.”

Vera bounced happily again. “I’m going to wear my mermaid dress.”

Lyra set her papers down completely. She turned and lifted Vera up, setting her on her lap. She reached out and cradled Vera’s face in her hands. “Vera.”

Vera reached up and held onto Lyra’s face. “Mummy.”

“You’re not going to school tomorrow. Daddy and I have to talk about it, and visit it to make sure it’s a nice place, and enroll you…it’s going to take some time. Okay?”

Vera was crestfallen. “How _much_ time?”

“I dunno,” Lyra said honestly. She leaned in and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “But you’ve got great teachers in the meantime. I bet none of the teachers at that school are _doctors_ like Mary and Mal are.”

“And Daddy,” Vera piped up at once.

“Right, and Daddy, but I was talking about the other sort of doctor.”

Vera dropped her hands from Lyra’s face and curled up to her chest. She pressed her little face against Lyra’s neck and sighed. “My friends go to school.”

She was talking about the other little kids in their flat building in Will’s world. She played with them often. Here, though, she only saw other kids when they crossed paths at the library or one of the public beaches.  Lyra knew she must be lonely, and that hurt. But she was afraid. This was her _child_. Letting her out into her world—even just to go to school each day—was terrifying to her. _She_ never had, after all: she’d been taught by scholars and protected at Jordan. Lyra’s world wasn’t a safe place for Vera any more than it’d been for Lyra, and even though Vera wasn’t hunted in Will’s world, Lyra didn’t much want her in school there, either, as Will had such horrid stories about primary school in his world…she just wasn’t sure if she was ready to send her daughter there. But maybe it wasn’t about her.

“Do you really feel like you’re ready for school?” she asked Vera. She knew that was a ‘big’ question, and that Vera probably didn’t have the ability to self-monitor her thoughts and feelings enough to answer it, so she tried to ask it in another way. “You’d be away from Daddy and me for _hours_. You have to follow loads of rules.”

“I know, I know all about school,” Vera reassured her.  “It’s in so many books.”

“You won’t miss Daddy and me?” she questioned. It was a curious question and not a wounded one. _She_ would miss her daughter if she were to start leaving her for six hours a day. Vera had _never_ been away from both her parents for that long.

Vera reached up and stroked Lyra’s hair gently just like Will did when she was upset. Lyra bit back the urge to laugh; it was precious to her.

“I’ll see you after school, and you can come get lunch with me,” Vera soothed her. So that was a no. Lyra _did_ laugh after that.

“I’ll talk to Daddy,” Lyra promised. “Maybe we can go tomorrow and visit the school to see what it’s like. Okay?”

She knew Vera wanted to keep arguing about going to school tomorrow, but she seemed to know to stop while she was ahead. She leaned her face up and pressed a loud, messy kiss to Lyra’s cheek. Lyra wrapped her up in her arms and pressed kiss after kiss to Vera’s face while she giggled and giggled, her heart full to the brim with love, and she knew that her little daughter was right. She was ready for school. It was just Lyra that wasn’t, and that was _Lyra’s_ problem, not Vera’s.

“Shall we go see what’s for dinner?” Lyra asked. She could finish finalizing her thesis another time. She wasn’t going to send her child away. At her feet, Pantalaimon didn’t even scold her. Of course, he was playing with Max (their favorite game of ‘guess my form’) and didn’t seem to want to send him away, either.

“I _hope, hope, hope_ it’s pineapple, salad, and cheesy potatoes!”

Lyra laughed. “All mixed together? I don’t know about that, Ver.”

“No, not all together, that’s silly!”

“Oh, all right. Just no meat, right?”

Vera scowled. “ _No meat_.”

Lyra sometimes wondered if all the salted and dried meats she’d had to eat during her pregnancy on Svalbard had something to do with Vera’s aversion to it. She ate like she was starved for fresh produce, and because of that, she ate very well (and because of Will’s knowledge and dedication to nutrition.) They had to sneak things like nuts into meals to get her to eat anything remotely rich in protein. But put a head of lettuce in front of the child and she was as happy as a rabbit; she was the only child they'd ever known whose vice was red cabbage.

Of course, when they climbed down to the kitchen, Will had made one of Vera’s requests—salad—but he’d mixed egg into it. Vera spent a good five minutes laying face-first on the floor, covering the back of her head dramatically as if the eggs were going to come alive and start clubbing her, crying pitifully about the salad being _ruined, ruined!_ while komodo dragon Max hissed and spat towards the skies. Will and Lyra sat at the table and ate and let her get on with it.

“I hope Vera will come eat with us before we’re done so she doesn’t have to eat alone,” Lyra commented to Will, where Vera could easily hear.

“Me too,” Will said just as loudly. “She’s hurting my feelings. I made this just for her because she requested salad.”

Vera looked over at them at that. Her dark hair was sticking to her wet cheeks. “Y-Y-You put _eggs_ in it!” she accused tearfully. Kirjava attempted to approach Max; he hissed at her angrily, and in response, Pantalaimon lunged at him and snarled reproachfully. Max quickly retreated and moved on Vera’s other side.

“You didn’t even try it,” Will reminded her. “Maybe you’ll like it. Eggs are good for you.”

Lyra didn’t think Vera cared at all what was ‘good’ for her. She just wanted what she was used to. Sure enough, Vera continued throwing her strop.

“ _Noooooooooooooooooo_ ,” she groaned, and then she pressed her face back into the tiled floor.

“If you don’t eat them, you won’t grow big and strong, and what do you think people will think, hm? They’ll think we don’t feed you,” Will persisted.

“ _Nooooooooooooooooo,_ ” she repeated.

“That’s all right, Will,” Lyra told him. She shrugged nonchalantly and forced herself to look away from her distraught child. “We were just talking about school, but I don’t think she’s ready if she’s afraid of some eggs. There will _definitely_ be all sorts of foods she doesn’t like for lunch at school, and if she can’t handle eggs here, she can’t handle being served chicken there.”

Will clearly saw what she was doing and played along. “You’re right. That’s a good point.”

In little more than a second, Vera was on her feet and back in her chair. She wiped her cheeks with her hands and then reached for her fork.

“I _am_ ready for school,” she told them fiercely, and with that, she dug into her salad. It was obvious from her first bite that she really liked it. After she realized that, she ate with delight, kicking her feet happily beneath the table. Max turned into a chubby bluebird and perched chirping on her shoulder. After she finished her bowl, Will pushed a bowl of pineapple in front of her, and she beamed and beamed, her tears long forgotten. She was even a good sport about her bath.

Later that night, she and Will snuggled Vera after reading _Tsunami: The Killing Sea_ to her in shifts for nearly an hour. She drifted off quickly, Max a tiny lovebird nested in her hair. Lyra kissed her sleep-warmed cheeks, smoothed her hair back carefully (mindful of Max), and then tiptoed out of the room and over the short bridge, Will following close behind. As soon as they were in their room, Lyra tugged on Will’s hand and dragged him over to the bed. She pulled him down to sit beside her and looked seriously at him.

“What?” he asked warily.

“I think we should consider school.”

He withdrew a bit like she knew he would. His expression turned guarded, his lips pressed into a tight, worried line. Lyra scooted closer and reached for his hand. She unfurled the fingers of his left hand—the three were curled into a fist—and brought his palm to her lips. He glanced over at her as she kissed his hand. She cradled it to her cheek afterwards.

“This community is safe. We’ve walked past the school loads of times. I think she’s ready, and I think it’s cruel of us to keep her cooped up here,” she admitted.

He didn’t look very reassured.

“We don’t know these people, Lyra. Not really. Any one of them could be closely tied to the Church. Any one of them could be looking out for _you_ , and by extension, any child associated with you. And me, too—” he pulled his left hand from her face and held it where she could see—“How many dark-haired, three-fingered men are you usually seen with?”

“We haven’t heard from any of Dame Hannah’s contacts that the Church is actively looking for me again. They gave up ages ago, Will. They haven’t seen or heard from me in half a decade. Nobody here would know to look out for me, and even if they did, they’d have no way to know I’m me.”

“Yes, if they saw a photo of you—”

“Where would they see a photo of me?”

“The Church could get hold of a photo, Lyra.”

“They haven’t circulated a photo of me to their Church members, though. If they gave any photos out, it’d only be to their inner circle—since Dame Hannah’s spies at the other levels of the Church never received anything—and nobody from the inner circle lives here. I don’t even have to introduce myself to the people at the school as _Lyra_. I can be _Lizzie_ , that’s easy. You can be Mark if you need to, but the Church doesn’t know you’re Will, and they certainly don’t know you’re a Parry. Vera’s fine. _Vera Parry_ won’t mean anything to anyone. It’s not as if she’s _Vera Silvertongue_ which, I’ll admit, wouldn’t be very subtle—though I maintain that it has a great ring to it.”

He looked over towards the door as Kirjava and Pantalaimon returned. He was frowning as Kirjava leapt gracefully into his lap. “I don’t know.”

“I do. I think we’ve put it off because _we’re_ not ready. And it’s not fair. I know there’s a lot to it…what with Vera being hunted, and us not being able to have any more kids, and us not being very experienced parents…but she’s clever, and she’s lonely, and I don’t want to hold her back just because we’re afraid.”

“It’s not _me_ that I’m worried about,” he argued. “It’s her. It only takes _one person_ figuring out who she is. And we could lose her forever. Is school worth that risk?”

Lyra didn’t blow his question off. She leaned against his side and she thought long and hard about it. _Was_ school worth that risk? Was it?

“Yes,” she decided. “Education and friends—those are things I don’t think anyone should have to do without. Least of all our child.”

He was still uneasy. Lyra tugged him down to lie with her and curled up in his arms. She reached up and stroked his face gently. “What if I asked my alethiometer?”

His hand wove softly into her hair (a good sign). She closed her eyes and listened to the familiar thump of his heartbeat as he dragged his fingers through it.

“I’d feel a lot better if you asked your alethiometer,” he finally admitted.

She would, too. She felt it was a reasonable request. But she had no interest in sitting up from his arms and asking it anything right now. She sank closer to him, and when he briefly stroked Pan’s back as Pan nuzzled against him, she shivered with delight.

“I’ll ask it,” she promised him, “but later, assuming you still want to brainstorm.”

His hands were steady and affectionate as he held and caressed her, and she could hear the way his heartbeat had increased slightly. She enjoyed the combination of his fingers dancing down her spine and the sound of Kirjava’s nearby purring.

“That’s always a safe assumption to make,” he murmured, his voice low and smooth. Lyra felt a thrill of excitement when their dæmons made a quiet, polite exit from the room—she knew what that meant.

She deeply enjoyed their time alone, and afterwards, she sought her alethiometer, just as she’d promised. She pulled it from the bedside table and slid back beneath the covers, cuddling once more with Will and sinking into his strong embrace. She rested her head on his chest as she held the alethiometer above her head and formed the question at once, without any effort at all.

“No books?” Will commented.

She twisted the wheel to put the last hand on the final symbol. She answered him without looking away from the alethiometer. “That was better than a hot bath. My mind is very clear.”

He didn’t say anything, but she did sense a bit of smugness coming from him. She allowed it.

The answer was explicit and precise. Lyra was pleased with it; she rarely had such an effortless and simple reading experience. She sank out of her alethiometer mindset and looked up at Will. He glanced down at her.

“Well?” he asked.

“It said we _must_ send her to school,” Lyra explained. “I only asked it if we _should_ , but it kept saying we _must_.”

Oddly, Will didn’t seem to like that. “Ask it why. Ask it what her going to school will lead to.”

Lyra nodded. She twisted the wheels again, sank into her mind, and then came back out. “She’s going to make a friend. A best friend. And it says this friend will be really important in her life as she grows up.”

Will thought about that. “A _good_ friend?”

She sought clarification from her alethiometer. Once she had it, she nodded in response. _His_ response was a heavy sigh. She didn’t like how worried and sad it sounded. She draped herself over his chest, her skin warming his, and kissed the side of his neck. He hugged her to him and didn’t say anything.

“I need you to ask it if she’ll be okay.”

She had already asked that inside another question, but she’d ask it specifically. She rolled off him long enough to grab her alethiometer again, and then she lay back over him and conferred with the device. The answer was just as easy as the others.

“She will be,” she said, and then she smiled. “She’ll be happy.”

“She’s happy _now_ ,” Will reminded her.

“Yes, but who knows how long that will last as she gets older? People aren’t meant to be kept in treetop cages. She needs friends, Will.”

“Why? I never had them ‘til you.”

Lyra set her alethiometer on Will’s other side and rested her head near his shoulder. “But wouldn’t you have wanted them if you’d been in a life situation where you could’ve had them?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I don’t like loads of people knowing about my life, or about me. And she’s got just as much reason to be secretive as I did—more, actually.”

“But you’ve still got me, Will. Don’t you want her to have a best friend, too? She won’t even have that if we never let her meet people. Imagine if we’d both stayed home rather than finding our way to Cittàgazze. We wouldn’t have ever had each other. Vera wouldn’t even exist.”

It was quiet as he thought about that. She was content to lay on him and kiss his neck and his shoulders, enjoying the lazy caresses of his hands against her skin as he held her. He always thought things through for a while before making decisions, even when Lyra had made her decision long ago. She was used to waiting for him.

Finally, after what felt like a half-hour, he said: “Can you ask it how we can help keep her safe?”

She reached for her alethiometer again. She formed the question, gathered the information it was giving her, and then set it back down. “By trusting her, it said.”

“She’s five.”

“I know. That’s just what it said.”

Will was eerily quiet. Lyra could tell something had genuinely upset him.

“What?” she asked, troubled, confused.

He pressed his face against her hair. “I’m worried about what I told the angel five years ago. About that promise I lied and made. He said Vera would want to do something, and that I wouldn’t want her to, but that I had to let her…is this it?”

It felt like ages since he’d told her about that conversation, but she still remembered parts of it clearly, mostly because he’d been so torn up over it when he’d finally spoken to her about it.

“He said every part of you would rebel against the idea, didn’t he? I don’t think this is it, Will. You’re _worried_ about this, sure, but you don’t hate the idea of school. If that prophecy was real, and if it comes true, I imagine it’ll be something much different.”

She knew it like she’d come to know the alethiometer symbols: inexplicably, instinctively. She knew she was right, but in a way, that was more troubling…if this wasn’t it, what _would_ be it? She wanted to ask him what they were going to do about that entire situation with the angel because he was the level-minded one who normally reassured _her_ , but he was worried now, so that meant she needed to feign surety.

“It’s going to be okay,” she continued confidently. She didn’t know that—she _hoped_ that—but she was going to lie and tell him that anyway.

He grimaced. She threw a leg over his and practically climbed on top of him, her hands reaching up to grip his face firmly. She stared down at him.

“It’s going to be _okay_ ,” she repeated deliberately.

“No it’s—”

She pressed her lips to his and kissed him softly. His words died. Usually that annoyed him, but this time, he melted into the kiss.

“It’s going to be okay,” she repeated _again_. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, like we’ve always dealt with everything.”

“What if we can’t?”

“What couldn’t _we_ deal with?” she scoffed. “We watched God die and we saved humanity when we were only twelve. I think we’ve probably got this. Now we’re older, cleverer, and we’re both doctors.”

“You’re not—you’ve got to finish your thesis.”

She leaned back and made a face at him.

* * *

 

Will’s daughter clung tightly to his hand. In her arms, she carried her blanket, the soft, white one Will had purchased for her long before he’d even known he’d have a daughter, back at the start of Lyra’s pregnancy. Max, as skittish as Vera, was a tiny butterfly perched atop the blanket.

“We can go home,” Lyra told Vera, surprised by her sudden shyness. Vera had been everything _but_ shy last week when they’d come to tour the school. She’d had a blast sitting in on a lesson, had made friends easily and had gushed the entire walk home about how much she loved the headmistress, Dr. Fidelia. But now she looked sad and worried. It made Will’s heart ache.

“Do you want to go home? What’s wrong?” he asked her quietly.

Vera moved closer to Will’s side. She clutched her blanket tightly to her chest. “I don’t like his dæmon.”

Will followed her line of sight. She was looking over at a little girl her age and her father, but Will was still confused because his dæmon was a sheep. It wasn’t a form often seen, but it wasn’t particularly notable, either. Will didn’t understand why it bothered Vera. He would’ve guessed its size—seeing as though her parents had rather small dæmons in comparison—but Vera was a girl who delighted in her own dæmon turning into an anaconda.

“The sheep dæmon?” Lyra clarified, sounding just as baffled as Will felt.

Vera nodded mutely.

“What about it frightens you?” Will asked.

Vera didn’t know how to answer that. She just turned and hugged Will’s leg instead. He set his left hand atop her head and smoothed her hair, frowning over at Lyra. She was peering intently at the man with the sheep dæmon, trying to find what was frightening their daughter, but she gave up a few moments later. Will felt uneasy.

“You could start school later,” Will reminded Vera. “There’s no rush.”

“No,” she muttered into his trousers, her words muffled, “I want to go now.”

“You don’t look happy, though,” Lyra said gently. She kneeled beside Vera. “What is it?”

Vera turned and hurled herself into her mother’s arms. Lyra lifted her up and propped her on her hip, smoothing her hair as she kissed her forehead. Will stepped closer automatically, his protective instincts surging. He abruptly wanted nothing more than to forcibly shove the man with the sheep dæmon from the school building. In Will’s mind, he had frightened Vera, and that was unforgivable.

“I don’t like the dæmon,” she repeated weakly.

Sensing they weren’t going to get a better or different answer, Lyra stopped asking Vera questions and hugged her tightly instead. She kissed her hair and rubbed her back soothingly. Vera snuggled into her mum’s embrace and clutched her tightly. And Will’s heart was climbing up his throat. The entire walk to the school, he’d been thinking about media in his world and how it showed parents crying every time they dropped their children off for their first day of school, and he’d been thinking about how ridiculous that was. But it didn’t seem ridiculous right then. Vera looked so tiny in Lyra’s arms, so innocent and fragile, and he couldn’t envision walking away from her and leaving her here with strangers. The thought made his throat narrow dangerously and his eyes sear.

Will could see the other parents leaving the classroom now. One by one they hugged their children and walked out until Will and Lyra were the only parents left in the classroom, and it was obvious that they were holding the class up. Will didn’t want to go, though.

“Are you sure you want to stay?” he asked Vera.

She nodded against Lyra’s shoulder, but she didn’t let go of her.

“Do you want us to come back here for lunch?” he asked.

She nodded again.

“Do you want to keep your blanket here with you?”

Another nod. After a long, painful pause, Vera appeared to force herself to let go of her mummy, and then she squirmed until Lyra set her down on her feet. She brought her blanket up and rubbed the side of her face with it as she peered nervously around the classroom. Max, a tiny beetle, had hidden in her blanket and refused to come out. She was clearly apprehensive: whatever she hadn’t liked about the sheep dæmon had really shaken her. But she squared her little shoulders, lifted her little chin, and took a step forward bravely. Will’s throat narrowed at the sight. She walked over and joined two girls at a nearby coloring table.

“Hi,” she said.

The little girls smiled back at her. “I like your mermaids,” one said to Vera, pointing at her dress.

“Thank you,” Vera said politely. Will felt a brief flash of pride at her manners. It briefly took over his anxiety and sadness, but when Vera looked quickly over her shoulder at Lyra and Will, as if to make sure they were still standing there, his sadness swelled once more. He waved once at Vera; she stood and ran over to him, crashing into his body as she wrapped her arms around his legs in a tight hug. Will was tearing up now. There was nothing for it.

“Bye, Daddy,” she said.

He couldn’t say a thing back because he thought he might cry. He leaned over and kissed her forehead instead.

She hugged Lyra’s legs next and told her goodbye, too.

“Have a good day,” Lyra told her, her voice wobbly. “We’ll see you at lunch, okay? We love you.”

“I love you, too,” Vera told them.

With that, she turned to walk back over to the table, but a few steps away from it, she turned around again. She walked back over to Will. She met his eyes as she held her blanket out for him to take. His heart lurched.

“Don’t you want to keep it with you?” he asked, his fingers closing around the soft material. Max turned into a hummingbird and flew from the folds of fabric, landing on Vera’s shoulder. Kirjava brushed Will’s ankle as she made to walk over to Max, but she stopped short, realizing that it might make it harder for him.

Vera’s light eyes were brimming with bravery, and fear, and excitement. She shook her head. Without another word, she turned and walked back over to her new friends, sitting beside them and reaching for a crayon at once.

Lyra reached for Will’s hand. He looked down at her as her fingers wove between his. Her light eyes—Vera’s eyes _—_ were filled with tears; his burned and tried to do the same, but he fought it back. _Don’t cry, don’t cry,_ he told himself, embarrassed.

“I guess we go now,” Lyra said quietly. She was cradling Pan in her arms.

“I guess,” Will agreed, but neither moved. It felt incredibly wrong to walk away without Vera. It felt wrong to _leave her_. He was really struggling with it, maybe more than Lyra was, and that surprised him.

“Will,” she prompted when he’d failed to move.

“Okay,” he said softly, but still she had to pull on his hand to prompt him to take a step forward. He shot one last look over at his daughter before they left the classroom. She was chatting with her new friends, but it looked so wrong—her sitting there in a foreign environment, surrounded by foreign people, his Vera. It was so strange to see something as cherished as his _child_ left behind in an odd environment. His instinct was to run over and pick her up and take her back where she belonged, at home, but he knew he wasn’t being logical.

He held it together up until they stepped out of the building, and then his vision blurred. He stopped walking. Kirjava brushed against his legs.

“Hang on,” he said thickly, unable to continue on. “I need a second.”

Lyra peered up at him in surprise as the first few tears slipped unbidden down his cheeks. He would’ve been ashamed, but his chest was full of such pain that he couldn’t feel much beyond that. Lyra set Pantalaimon down, stepped up, and wrapped her arms around his middle. She kissed his chest.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly, the three fingers of his left hand trembling as he wiped impatiently at his face. He couldn’t stop picturing the way Vera had first walked away from them, scared but determined, her little head held high despite her fear. It broke his heart because he didn’t want her to ever feel fear, or be apart from him.

“No. Don’t apologize. That was awful,” Lyra said.

“ _Awful_ ,” Will agreed fervently.

“I feel like I just...I dunno. It feels sort of like…” she trailed off. Will understood without it having to be said.

“A milder version of leaving our dæmons behind,” he completed for her.

She looked up at him quickly, her eyes widened in surprise.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she said.

“I think it feels like that, too,” he whispered, pained.

“And it should,” she said, her voice growing thicker as she got upset, too. “She’s part of us just as they are.”

His little daughter, alone without them…what if someone hurt her, or frightened her? What if she fell and got hurt?

“I hate this.”

“I do, too.”

“Maybe we should go back and get her.”

Lyra didn’t answer immediately. She was thinking.

“No,” she finally said, and Will knew she was right, and he’d known she'd say it. “That’s not fair. This pain is our problem, not Vera’s. She’s her own little person, Will. We can’t keep her from things just because it terrifies us.”

She was right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

She stepped back from him as soon as he forced his tears back down his throat.

“Well? Should we go home?”

He couldn’t imagine being that far from her. He made a face. Lyra did, too.

“Library?” Lyra suggested. It was only one building down from the school.

“Okay,” he agreed.

She lifted her shoulder bag and forced a bit of cheer into her voice. “I’m glad I brought my research along. You can help me edit my thesis while we wait.”

“Fun,” he said dryly. “Economic History. Yay.”

“Oh, shut it.”

* * *

 

Will was relieved when lunchtime arrived. He looked up from the dense page in front of him.

“Time to meet Vera,” he said happily.

Lyra grabbed the page from him. “You haven’t marked anything!”

“There was nothing to mark,” he said. “It’s very good.” And boring, but that wasn’t her fault. Her area of study just didn’t interest Will at all.

She shook her head. “You’re not a good editor.”

“Might I suggest you let Dr. Polstead help you with thesis edits?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” she sighed.

They walked hand-in-hand to the school, Pantalaimon and Kirjava blazing ahead of them. They were the only parents there for lunch, and Will wondered if that would embarrass Vera, but she was genuinely delighted to see them. She ran full-speed at them across the dining hall, crashing at once into them, and Will and Lyra wrapped her up in a tight, shared hug. Max was an overexcited puppy, yipping and wiggling happily as Pan and Kirjava fussed over him.

“Look!” Vera exclaimed, pulling back from her parents’ arms. She held her hand up. Will’s heart about stopped to see the blood-stained bandage wrapped around the little finger and ring finger of her left hand—the same fingers he was missing. “I’m like you, Daddy!”

Lyra grabbed Vera’s hand at once, her face paling. “What happened?!”

Will reached out and gently unwound the bandage while Lyra held Vera’s hand in hers. He was terrified of what he’d see, his heart pounding and his stomach sick and his own hand wound aching, but the injury wasn’t too bad: she’d sliced her fingers all right, but it wouldn’t require sutures.

“I cut my fingers on the playground,” she explained, and then: “I read the best in my whole class!”

“That’s great. How’d you cut your hand?”

 _And why weren’t we contacted?_ Will wondered, furious. He was a doctor. _Nobody_ was fit to tend to his daughter’s injuries but him.

“I was playing and then something cut me,” she said. “Let’s sit with my friend Gloria!”

Vera grabbed their hands and dragged them over to a red-headed little girl with a prairie dog dæmon. Will wasn’t very talkative during lunch; he was too busy fretting and fuming over his daughter’s injury. He wanted to know precisely how she’d gotten injured, what they’d done to the wound, and why he wasn’t called, but he didn’t want to make a scene, so he resigned himself to wait until he could talk privately with the headmistress.

“Vera,” Lyra said, near the end of lunch. She held Vera’s injured hand again. “What did you cut your hand _on_?”

“The playground,” Vera answered. “The thing you climb on had a sharp spot and it got me. Dr. Fidelia is going to fix the playground.”

Will scowled. Couldn’t they have inspected their playground equipment for dangerous spots _before_ his daughter was injured by them?

“Who bandaged your fingers?” Will asked.

“My teacher. She washed my fingers with soap and it really hurt and I cried and then she wrapped it in a bandage and it felt better,” Vera said.

Will was relieved the wound had been cleaned, but he wasn’t happy that somebody other than him had done it. He should’ve been called. He would’ve come there and taken care of her himself.

“I’m sorry that happened, Vera,” Lyra told their daughter gently. “I bet that hurt.”

“It did,” Vera said. “And I was scared.”

“Because of the blood?” asked Lyra knowingly.

“No,” said Vera. She shook her head.

“Why, then?” Lyra wondered.

Vera leaned in. “Gloria’s daddy was there. And his dæmon.”

Will and Lyra both stiffened a bit. They exchanged a concerned look.

“The sheep?” Will asked, just to be sure.

Vera nodded.

“What was he doing back there?” Lyra demanded.

“Gloria left her coat at home and then he brought it back.”

Will felt weird about the entire situation, and he didn’t know why. He just had a bad feeling, and he wanted to sweep her into her arms and take her home and never bring her back, and the ferocity of that desire took him aback.

“Oh,” Lyra said, forcing her voice to remain casual. “He was there when you cut your hand?”

“Mmhmm,” said Vera. She ate another bite of her rice. “He wrapped a handkerchief around my hand and brought me to my teacher.”

“Oh,” repeated Lyra. “That was nice of him. Is he nice? Her dad?”

“Yes. I just don’t like his dæmon,” she said again. “Is it time to go home now?”

“Not quite,” Lyra answered. She was giving Will an odd look. He guessed his silence hadn’t slipped her notice. “You’ve got about two hours left.”

“Oh,” Vera said, a bit disappointed.

“You _can_ come home now if you’d like,” Lyra added quickly. “You don’t have to stay all day if you don’t want to.”

“No,” Vera said, “I’m going to stay the whole time.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

Will lifted Vera up into his arms, spun her around, and kissed her cheek before departing.

“I love you,” he reminded her. He held her wounded hand gently. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

She leaned in and rubbed her nose against his. He smiled.

“Bye, Daddy, I love you,” she said sweetly.

She and Lyra hugged goodbye, they walked her to the classroom, and for the second time that day, Will felt the pull and the pain of separation as they walked away.

He didn’t head for the doors, though. He veered left and headed for the headmistress’s office.

“Will?” Lyra wondered.

He didn’t answer. He knocked once on the door, and when Dr. Fidelia called ‘ _come in!’_ , he stepped in, brimming with fierce rage. The older woman was taken aback by it. She leaned away from him instinctively.

“Mr. Parry,” she greeted nervously.

He’d had time to think about what he wanted to say. What he said was even, deliberate, and deathly serious.

“When my daughter is injured, I expect to be contacted no matter the nature of the injury or the severity of it.”

She nodded quickly. “Yes. I understand. From now on, you will be.”

Something still wasn’t sitting right with him. It bothered him deeply that he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Even a scratch or a nosebleed.”

“Okay,” she assured him.

 Will didn’t feel assured, though. He nodded once and left, Lyra hurrying quickly after him. She caught his hand as they exited the school.

“Will—”

He spun around to face her. “I don’t like this, Lyra.”

She dropped his hand. Her light eyebrows furrowed. “Which part?”

“All of it. I don’t know. I don’t _know_ ,” he repeated, frustrated, uncomfortable. “Something’s not right.”

“It’s not,” Kirjava agreed. She sat beside Will and looked up at Lyra seriously. “Don’t you feel it?”

Lyra exchanged a look with Pan. “We feel uneasy, yes, but I dunno why.”

“We don’t, either,” Kirjava said.

Will and Lyra held eye contact for a moment, long enough to communicate the same thought. Without saying anything else, they headed together to Malcolm’s house—which was closest to the school—to find someplace quiet for Lyra to confer with her alethiometer.

* * *

 

Will accepted a cup of tea from Malcolm. 

“And I don’t know,” he continued quietly, not wanting to disturb Lyra’s concentration. He was at the table with Malcolm while Lyra sat on the sofa with her alethiometer in hand. “I feel like something’s wrong, but I don’t know what.”

“Hmm,” Malcolm mused. He sat down with his own mug of tea. He blew on it and watched as Asta and Kirjava whispered together. “When did you first start feeling uneasy?”

That was easy to pinpoint. “When Vera got frightened.”

“When she saw the sheep dæmon?” Malcolm clarified.

“Yes.”

He nodded. He drummed his fingers against the tabletop as he thought.

“And she never said what it was about the dæmon that frightened her?”

“No. She didn’t. And at first, I wasn’t _too_ worried because kids have odd, irrational fears all the time. But then when we went back…I don’t know, Malcolm. Her fingers—the same fingers I lost—being injured, and the school not contacting me, and that man coming back to the playground…” he trailed off. He felt as disquieted now as he’d felt then. “Logically I know none of it seems that odd, but I just had this _feeling_ …”

“Intuition,” Malcolm provided. “Our minds can sense when something isn’t right even when we can’t consciously determine the reasoning. Something about it made you uneasy—so something about the situation is wrong.”

He wasn’t as trusting as Malcolm was. “Then I wonder…maybe I just felt that way because I was leaving her for the first time. And maybe her hand getting injured freaked me out because it was the same fingers that I lost. Maybe I’m making too much of this.”

“But Lyra felt the same way,” Asta reminded Will.

That was true. He didn’t know what to say. He buried his face in his hands.

“What did the man look like? With the sheep dæmon?” Malcolm wondered.

Will shrugged, his face still in his hands. “I wasn’t looking that closely. He was older than me, older than you, possibly late forties?”

“And Vera’s friend is his daughter? You’re sure?”

Will looked up. “I mean, that’s what Vera said. Why?”

“Because I pass by the church every day on my daily walks, and the priest there has a sheep dæmon, but he wouldn’t have a daughter, would he? Being a priest.”

Will’s blood ran cold. He couldn’t move for a second. He was certain that Vera had said the man was Gloria’s father, but he could’ve been a foster dad, or an adoptive dad, or even…

“It’s possible that Gloria called him ‘Father’ and Vera just assumed she meant ‘dad’. She doesn’t know anything about the Church. She never would’ve heard of anybody called ‘Father’ except actual fathers,” he realized, horrified. He stood up at once. “I’ve got to go get her.”

“Wait,” Malcolm said quickly. “Don’t run all the way there in a panic. That’ll look suspicious. Let’s think about this. The Church doesn’t know your name, right? _Or_ the name you and Lyra gave your daughter. So they’d have no reason to think anything of a little girl named _Vera Parry_. As far as the Church knows, your unnamed child died. They have no way to know she’s alive, no way to know she’d be here on this island. Just because he was there and Vera’s afraid of his dæmon doesn’t mean he knows who she is.”

“But he could’ve recognized Lyra. She looks just the same, even if she’s going by a different name, and Pan can’t exactly change his form—”

“But we’ve no reason to think the Church has people on the lookout for Lyra, either,” Malcolm reminded him carefully. “All our spies within the Church say they’ve stopped looking for Lyra years ago.”

Will was frustrated with him. “You’re the one who just said if I think something’s wrong something probably is.”

“And it _is_. But that something isn’t necessarily that man knowing Vera’s true identity. You probably just sensed that he was affiliated with the Church. You two have every reason to see the Church and its members as enemies.”

“Then why is Vera so afraid of his dæmon?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Maybe because she’s never seen a sheep dæmon before.”

“What’s frightening about a _sheep_?”

“I don’t know. She may not know, either. Sometimes people just don’t like certain things.”

Will hoped Lyra was finding some better answers. He carried his tea over to the sofa and sat quietly beside her, watching as she studied the face of the alethiometer intently. It was at least ten minutes before she shivered back to reality and turned to look at Will.

“He’s the priest,” she said first and foremost. Will pursed his lips and nodded. Lyra looked confused. “I asked if he knew who Vera was, but it said he didn’t. But it also said he was interested in her.”

Will looked sharply at Lyra. “Ask for more information. What does that mean? Like…?”

Lyra shook her head. “Not in a malicious way. He wants to ‘save her’. Her soul, I mean. He’s got this obsession with baptizing every kid on the island, and he knows she hasn’t been.”

“What about his dæmon?”

This appeared to be what was confusing Lyra. She rubbed between her eyes wearily. “I dunno, Will. I don’t understand it. I asked it why Vera was afraid of his dæmon, and it told me that the dæmon…I don’t know, it was sort of saying…”

She was struggling to articulate it. Will could sense her frustration.

“Like the dæmon is against everything Vera is for. Or maybe Vera is against everything the dæmon stands for. Something like that. They’re in opposition somehow—or they will be.”

Will was as confused as he was at the start. “What does that even mean? She’s a little girl—how can she be in opposition with an adult?”

“I dunno,” she repeated, annoyed. “I told you I don’t really get it.”

Malcolm walked over and sat beside them. He simplified the problem. “Lyra, can you ask it if Vera is safe to continue school?”

She nodded. Will waited as she asked her alethiometer. Sooner than he’d expected, she looked back at them.

“Yes. It says she won’t come to any harm there.”

Malcolm nodded. “Then I wouldn’t worry, Will. It said the priest doesn’t know who she is. It said she won’t come to any harm.”

Will met Lyra’s eyes. She didn’t look convinced, either.

* * *

 

Vera was exhausted when they collected her from school. She lay tiredly in Will’s arms the entire walk back.

“So after story time, what did you do?” Lyra asked.

Vera yawned against Will’s shoulder. “We played some more.”

“What did you play?”

“Me and Gloria played mermaids.”

Will smiled. That sounded like Vera.

“Then what?” wondered Lyra.

“Then we napped only I wasn’t tired so I just whispered to Max. Then we had a snack. It was mango. They left green parts on it. Then we counted. Then we sang songs. Then I painted you and Daddy.”

She certainly _was_ tired now. Will felt they weren’t going to get much more out of her before she fell asleep, so he asked the question that mattered most to him.

“Did you have fun?”

“Mmhmm,” she said. She yawned again.

“Do you want to go back tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said tiredly. Within seconds after that, she was limp in his arms as she drifted off to sleep. He carried her all the way home, settled her down on the sofa in the kitchen, and set about making dinner while she snoozed. Lyra worked quietly on her thesis from the kitchen table, but Will thought she was probably as distracted as he was. He threw the heads of the carrots into the skillet instead of the chopped bits, nearly cut one of his fingers off again, and grabbed a pot of boiling water without pot holders. Lyra, in contrast, swore under her breath every couple of minutes and balled up paper after paper. Finally, after the two skirted disaster a number of times, Will gave up on what he’d been making previously, threw a spinach pasta bake in the oven, and collapsed at the table with a damp cloth wrapped around his burnt hand. Lyra pushed her books and papers away from herself and let her head fall to the tabletop with a groan.

“It’s not a good day,” Will acknowledged.

“At all,” Lyra grumbled, her words muffled into the table.

He reached across the table with his good hand and took one of hers. She rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb.

“Are we sending her back tomorrow?” Will asked. It was what was bothering him. He was sure it was bothering her, too.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The alethiometer said it was safe, but just because it’s safe doesn’t mean we necessarily should.”

“I _don’t_ think we should,” Pantalaimon muttered. He’d been curled up in Lyra’s lap, but he peeked up above the edge of the table as he joined the conversation.

Will looked over at Kirjava. She was keeping sentry on the arm of the sofa.

“Kirjava?” he asked.

“I think we should let Vera decide,” she answered.

Will frowned. Lyra was looking at him and waiting.

“I don’t want her to go back,” he admitted. It wasn’t difficult to determine that. “But that’s just how I feel. I don’t know if that’s the right answer.”

Lyra brought his hand up and cradled it to her soft cheek. “Let’s get Vera’s opinion during dinner. And your mum’s, and Mary’s, and Malcolm’s. Then we can decide.”

It was the right thing to do. But what Will wanted most of all was to take his family and run back to his world as fast as they could.

* * *

 

“Left, right, now parry!!”

“ _Bam_!” Vera cried, slamming the makeshift fencing sword into Malcolm’s. He exaggerated the force of her block and pretended to go flying backwards. He landed on his bottom in the dirt. Lyra laughed loudly from the sidelines, amused. Vera’s triumphant grin faded to a look of comical concern. “Mal!! Oh no!”

He was already up by the time she sprinted over to him. She threw her arms around his legs and apologized profusely, but Malcolm kneeled down and smiled.

“No, don’t apologize for that—it was a _marvelous_ parry, Vera Parry!”

Vera found that delightful. She giggled and giggled and bounced happily around Malcolm. Lyra felt Will’s hand press against her lower back.

“Did you call her in?” he asked softly.

“Not yet,” she admitted, her eyes still on her daughter. “I’m about to. They’re having loads of fun.”

“All right. I’ll go get her food dished out so it’s ready once she’s inside.”

“Good idea.”

Lyra waited until Vera had another successful fencing round, and then she called her in for dinner. Vera looked likely to argue, but when Malcolm immediately turned to head inside, she followed his example.

“Mummy,” she greeted Lyra, out of breath, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed. She grabbed onto Lyra’s hands; Lyra lifted her up in the air and swung her gently side-to-side while she giggled some more. “I have a _new_ name.”

“Oh, is that so? Shall we change your papers?”

“Yes!”

“Okay. What are we changing your name to?”

“I’m Sword Girl,” Vera said seriously.

Lyra arched an eyebrow. She swung Vera again. “Sword Girl Parry?”

“It’s even better than Vera!”

“Why didn’t I think of that one?” Lyra said with mock regret. She twisted Vera so that she was leaning back against her and lifted her up so that she was standing on top of her feet. Lyra took wide, exaggerated steps, her arms crossed over Vera’s chest to keep her from tumbling forward, and Vera fell into giggles again. “Will,” Lyra greeted as they stepped into the kitchen. He turned and looked away from dinner to smile at them. “Why didn’t we think to name our daughter Sword Girl Parry? That’s her new name.”

Will shook his head. “We’re just not clever, Lyra, that’s the only reason I can think of.”

“Too bad,” Lyra lamented. Max—a butterfly now—flew close to Lyra’s face, just as happy as Vera. Lyra made a funny face at him; he and Vera laughed together. “What about you, Max? Are you still Maximus?”

“No,” he told Lyra, “I’m _Maximillian_.”

That took both Lyra and Will off guard. They fell into laughter, too, so that their entire little family was filling the air with giggles.

They all sat down together—Lyra, Will, Vera, Malcolm, Mary, and Elaine—and Lyra dug into the meal Will had made at once. While she ate, Mary and Elaine interrogated Vera.

“Were the kids nice?” Elaine worried.

“What did you learn about?” asked Mary.

Elaine: “Was your teacher kind?”

Mary: “Can anybody else in your class read as well as you can?”

Elaine: “What did you play at recess?”

Mary: “Did you have a science lesson?”

Vera chewed slowly and looked from Mary to Elaine, her eyes widened a bit. After a moment, she swallowed her food and said: “You’re asking too much things.”

“Too _many_ things,” Malcolm corrected automatically.

“You’re asking too many things,” Vera corrected impatiently. “We’ve got to take _turns_.”

Lyra choked on a bite of salad.

“That’s right,” Will said proudly, reaching over to brush Vera’s hair out of her face. “You tell them, Vera.”

“Mary goes first, then Nana, then Mary, then Nana,” Vera facilitated.

They asked their questions one by one. Vera answered them as they were asked. She told them that yes, the kids were kind, except the older kids, who had made fun of her mermaid dress. (“ _Who_? _What are their names?_ ” Will had demanded sharply. Vera wisely kept any distinguishing information to herself.) She told Mary that she was by far the most advanced reader of her age group and that they did a ‘lava experiment’; she told Elaine that her teacher was nice and that they played hide-and-seek at recess.

“It sounds like a fun day,” Malcolm commented, once Vera had answered all Elaine and Mary’s questions. “Are you going to go back tomorrow?”

Vera looked at her parents. “Can I, Mummy? Can I, Daddy?” A pause. She glanced at Malcolm and then looked back. “ _May I_ go to school tomorrow?” she self-corrected.

Lyra looked at Will. Will looked back at her. They held their gaze, a million uncertainties and questions churning within it. Lyra felt lost. She knew Will did, too. 

“Do you _want_ to go back?” Will finally asked Vera.

Vera nodded at once. “Yes. Tomorrow we’re going to start a class garden.”

“We could always plant a garden here,” Pantalaimon piped up hopefully.

“Hush, Pan,” Lyra muttered.

“No,” he hissed back stubbornly.

“Maybe,” Lyra told Vera. “Daddy and I are going to talk about it some more before we decide.”

Vera slumped down in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “ _Ugh_!” she cried. “You and Daddy are always talking about stuff.”

“That’s a good thing,” Elaine told Vera. “Sit up straight, love, and finish your supper.”

* * *

 

Vera was read a book by everybody in the house, kissed probably two dozen times, and then tucked up warmly in bed. Lyra set her soft white blanket into her arms and kissed her forehead.

“Goodnight, Vera,” she said.

“Sword Girl,” Vera corrected with a yawn.

Lyra leaned in and kissed her forehead again. “I love you, Sword Girl.”

“I love _you_ , Mummy,” she whispered. She brought her soft blanket up to rub it tiredly against her cheek. Will fell down heavily onto the bed beside her; Vera laughed as she bounced up in the air from the force of it. Will wrapped her up in his arms a moment later and covered her giggling face with kisses. Vera latched her arms around his neck afterwards and hugged him tightly.

“Can’t I sleep with you and Mummy?” she begged.

“No—Mummy and I have to talk,” Will said solemnly.

“Can you talk about saying yes to me going to school?”

“Certainly. Sweet dreams. I love you.”

“I love you,” Vera said back. She raised her voice and called out: “I LOVE YOU NANA AND MARY AND MAL!”

“I think they’ve already gone,” Lyra told her. “You can tell them again tomorrow.”

“Aw, okay,” Vera sighed.

Will and Lyra got ready for bed slowly, listening out for Vera’s inevitable calls. She called for Lyra after only five minutes; Lyra brought her a glass of water and kissed her goodnight once more. They readied for bed, but they didn’t bother getting under the covers because they knew she’d call for them at least one more time. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, she called for Will in a panicked voice and made him check outside her window.

“She said something was out there,” he explained to Lyra, once he’d returned.

Lyra’s hair stood on end for a moment. “Outside her window?”

“Yeah,” he said. He looked a bit spooked, too.

“What’d you do?”

“I looked out of it, but I didn’t see anything. I put her blinds down, pulled both sets of curtains closed, and told her not to worry. She asked if Kirjava would stay in there.”

“She’s frightened,” Lyra realized.

“I think so. But Kirjava is sleeping at the foot of her bed so I’m not too worried.”

Lyra felt a brief flash of longing coming from Pantalaimon. She was sure he’d go join them, too. He loved to snuggle up with Max and Kirjava and to be near Vera.

“Do you think she was just trying to get you to let her come sleep in here?” Pan wondered curiously.

“I doubt it. She’s pretty straight-forward. If she’s learning to lie and manipulate, God help us,” Will muttered.

Lyra was still thinking about the window thing as she and Will slipped under the covers. He rolled over and turned the lamp off, curled his body around hers, and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

“Did she say she heard something outside the window?” Lyra asked.

“She said she saw something.”

“Well, what did she see?”

“I dunno. She said a shadow. I think the leaves just moved.”

Lyra shut her eyes and tried to forget it. She scooted back closer to Will’s body and drew his arm over her waist so she could clasp his hand and hold it to her heart. She kissed his palm, the back of his hand, the place his fingers should have been.

“You’re worried,” he commented.

“A bit.”

“Want me to carry her in here?”

“No, she’s probably asleep by now. I may go sleep in there.” A pause. She rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand. “Do you think that’s silly?”

“No. I wanted to pick her up and flee the island because she was afraid of a sheep. I’ve no room to judge.”

Lyra sighed. She moved his hand back to her heart. He gently stroked her skin with his thumb.

“What are we doing, Will?” she whispered.

“Fumbling about.”

“We’ve no idea how to be parents. How have we managed to raise such a lovely child thus far?”

“Luck. Help from outside forces.”

She shook her head. “I feel lost. I don’t know what to do. Do you think it’s going to get worse? Do you think the questions we’ve got to discuss in the dark will get harder and harder as she grows?”

“Probably. It’s all uncharted territory for us. And _this_ …Lyra, I feel really bad about all of this. And I don’t know whether it’s, I don’t know, fatherly intuition or paranoia or what. I just know that I felt very odd today. And I _dread_ her going back to that school. Part of me is worried that…that…”

Lyra waited curiously.

“What?” she wondered.

“I’m sort of worried that I’m getting what my mum has. With how frightened I was today…feeling like people were waiting in the shadows to swoop her up…”

Lyra wasn’t worried about that. “I felt the same way. It wasn’t just you. I’ve got a bad feeling, too. But you know what? I don’t think this feeling we’ve got is specific to the school. I think it’s just…well…she’s growing up, isn’t she? I think that’s what’s frightening me, and I think it may be frightening you, too. It was easy to keep her safe when she was tiny…we could just hold her in our arms and hide her and protect her. But now she’s getting older, and she’s starting to want to go out into the world a bit, and there’s so much out in the world that we can’t protect her from. We can’t watch out for her all the time anymore. And that’s…”

“Petrifying.”

“Right. I think about all those strangers out there that she’ll encounter every day—without us by her side!—and it makes me sick. Because people can’t be trusted. Not with our girl.”

“No,” he agreed. “It makes me sick, too.”

“So what do we do?” she pleaded.

“I wish that I knew. Part of me wants to trust our gut, but part of me thinks you were right before. Is it fair for us to make decisions about _her_ life based on _our_ feelings?”

Lyra thought about it. “No,” she admitted, a bit reluctantly. “It’s not. But it’s the easier thing to do.”

“Doesn’t make it the right thing.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Lyra sighed. She had to scrounge up every bit of strength she had to say her next words. “I think we should give it one more day. Let her go one more time, and then we can reconvene tomorrow night.”

Will seemed okay with that answer. He pressed his face to the back of her neck and kissed the skin there softly. “All right. Let’s do that.”

Lyra had just relaxed completely into Will’s embrace and was drifting off to sleep when she heard the treehouse creak in the wind. Ordinarily, the sound wouldn’t have reached her notice, but she felt a bit edgy. To her surprise, Will sat up right as she did.

“Vera’s room?” he guessed.

“Vera’s room.”

She knew they were being a bit overprotective as they moved to Vera’s room to sleep, but she couldn’t help it. Just as she was struggling to find the right balance with discipline, she was having a difficult time balancing her protective instincts. Rightly so, too, for a woman who’d grown up hunted and hidden herself.

* * *

 

Will didn’t cry when they dropped Vera off the next morning, but it still hurt. He and Lyra left the school feeling just as desolate as they’d felt yesterday. The only thing that kept Will from changing his mind was Vera’s excitement and eagerness to be there.

He had to work that day so he kissed Lyra goodbye and made his way to the tiny hospital building. The population was so sparse that he sometimes went entire days without having any patients at all (which was very different from his job in A&E at John Radcliffe in Oxford), but luckily, he got about five patients that day. He didn’t want to sit around bored dwelling on Vera’s safety, and the few patients he got helped keep his mind occupied.

The last patient he had before he left to collect Vera from school was somebody surprisingly familiar, though Will didn’t recognize him until he saw his dæmon. He had to force himself not to stop short in the examining room doorway. He walked all the way in, shut the door behind himself, and extended his hand. The man shook it politely. They exchanged the typical pleasantries ( _Hi, how are you, the weather’s nice,_ etc.) and then Will sat on the stool in front of the examining table.

“What’s brought you here?” he asked.

He could feel the dæmon’s beady eyes on him. He glanced quickly at it. For a very brief moment, he felt a thrill of foreboding, and he understood Vera. But the longer he looked, the more he became aware of the tufts of wool and the silly expression, and that sense of foreboding faded.

“I just need a refill on my medicine,” the man—Father Cain, as he’d introduced himself—explained.

Will rolled the stool over and grabbed the patient’s file off the table where the nurse had left it. He flipped through it. It had taken him nearly a year to memorize and learn all the alternative medicines in Lyra’s world, but he was pretty good at it now, and he recognized the medicine on the chart at once.

“Your reflux medication, correct?” Will asked, looking up at the man. He nodded. “Is the current dosage still working for you?”

“Yes, I feel much better on it,” he affirmed.

Will nodded and switched to the note page of his file. He noted the date, Father Cain’s comments, and the fact that he was going to issue another prescription. The man was quiet as he wrote. Then, out of the blue: “You’re Vera’s father.”

Hearing his daughter’s name on a stranger’s lips sent a shock of confusion and panic through Will. He looked up at once, the pen still clutched tightly in his right hand. He had frozen. The man noticed.

“I met her yesterday at school,” he explained. “One of the children I take care of at the Church home is her age. She looks like you, and she told me you were a doctor, and that you were missing two fingers.”

Will was extremely uncomfortable. All he could think about was how the Church—in general—recognized him via his missing fingers. Had this man, too? Will had no idea how much he knew. He hoped he was just a community priest with no real insight into any larger Church workings, but one could never be sure.

“How’s her hand?” Father Cain continued.

Will closed his file and set the pen to the side. “Fine. I cleaned it well last night and it was already looking a lot better this morning.” He glanced down at Kirjava. In this world, she had to follow him around at work, and usually she complained about it being a bit boring (she was used to getting to run off and do whatever she pleased in Will’s world), but she didn’t look bored now. She was watching the sheep dæmon intently, never taking her eyes from it, and it didn’t take its eyes from her, either.

“How lucky she is that you’re her father,” he said, and maybe he meant it to be kind and slightly joking, given Will’s profession, but it only made Will edgier. Because she _wasn’t_ lucky for that. Not at all.

“Do you have any more medical concerns you want to address while you’re here?” asked Will.

Father Cain shook his head. “No more medical concerns, no. Just needed the refill. Now, I know the word in the community is that you travel often for work—and I know your family comes and goes often throughout the year and that your family’s a bit introverted—but you should visit our church. You’d be welcomed with open arms.”

Will thought there was a better chance of him chopping his left hand off completely and being done with it. He forced a polite smile on his face.

“Thank you for the invitation,” he said, and with that, he lifted the file and left the examining room. He set the file down on the nurses’ desk for them to file away, retreated to his office to get his belongings to leave to get Vera, and as soon as his office door was shut, Kirjava leapt onto his desk.

“His dæmon is odd,” Kirjava said at once.

Will pulled his prescription pad over and quickly scrawled a refill for the man’s medication so he could drop it off on his way out. He glanced at Kirjava after he’d finished.

“How so?” he asked. “I felt like something was off, too.”

“It just _stood_ there staring…it didn’t look away from me once. It didn’t blink. It didn’t move or say a thing. I think that’s why our Vera doesn’t like it. You don’t often see dæmons that lifeless.”

That made much more sense to Will. “She _does_ hate dolls.”

“Right. Well, that dæmon was as lifeless in that room as a stuffed sheep would’ve been.”

“Hm,” Will commented. He wasn’t sure what to think of the encounter. He couldn’t decide if he felt a bit better having met the man or worse. “I don’t know what to think about him, Kirjava.”

“Me neither. But I do know one thing.”

“What?”

“We’re not going to his damn church.”

Will nodded in agreement.

* * *

 

Lyra was waiting outside the hospital when Will exited. She and Pantalaimon were whispering and appeared stressed; it stretched Will’s nerves.

“What’s wrong?” he asked at once, worried.

“We’ve hit a snag with our thesis,” Lyra complained. She leaned her face up and Will kissed her lips gently, his arms winding around her waist to pull her in for a brief hug. “You know,” she added, her words muffled into his medical jacket. “Dr. Silvertongue doesn’t even sound that great, anyway.”

“Oh, hush,” he scolded. “You’ll figure it out. How many snags have you hit since you started it? Like a dozen?”

“Yes, maybe, but this one is a _serious_ one.”

“Ah. A _serious_ one,” he mocked.

“Yes,” she persisted stubbornly. She stepped back and took his hand. “Let’s go get our girl.”

The walk didn’t take long at all, but somehow Father Cain beat Will there. He was talking with Vera and Gloria at the playground when Will and Lyra walked up.

“Um…” Lyra said, alarmed.

Will was already surging forward. The three looked up as Will approached. Father Cain gave a friendly wave while Vera gasped in excitement.

“ _Daddy_!” she cried. Will was taken aback by the strength of her hug as she threw her arms around his legs; he teetered back for a moment. His irritated concern faded to affection. He hoisted her up into his arms and kissed her cheek as she clung happily to him.

“Did you have fun?” Will asked her.

“Yes. Daddy, can I go to church with Gloria?”

The question took Will off guard. He wasn’t sure what to say. A second later, Lyra joined them, and Vera dove straight from Will’s arms to Lyra’s. Lyra caught her and spun her around. After a moment, Vera leaned back from Lyra’s arms to ask the same thing she’d asked Will.

“Can I go to church with Gloria?”

Will was very aware of Father Cain standing there, smiling, waiting. He was furious; he could feel the emotion boiling up in his chest. How dare Father Cain invite _his daughter_ somewhere without asking them first.

Lyra was more alarmed than Will had been. By instinct, she blurted: “Absolutely not!”

Vera’s face fell. Will stepped in to pave over her exclamation. “Vera, you know we’re busy Sunday,” he lied.

Vera looked confused. “We’re n—”

Will had to scrounge for every ounce of his self-control to look at Father Cain and smile. “Thank you for inviting her. Perhaps another time.”

Father Cain smiled again. “Please do. Gloria loves Vera—any time she wants to come to the church the girls can play. It doesn’t have to be a service. Anytime.”

Vera was hanging onto his words a bit too much. It bothered Will.

“Great,” he said shortly. He gestured over towards where Vera’s teacher was chatting with another parent. “We’ve got to go talk to her teacher. Don’t forget to go pick your prescription up. It should be ready by now.”

“Thank you,” Father Cain said.

He could tell Lyra was brimming with questions, but she knew better than to ask them now. To keep up appearances, Will really did walk over to her teacher. Lyra carried Vera and joined him.

“Oh, hello again! Vera’s famous parents! I’ve heard _so much_ about you these past two days,” her teacher greeted. She smiled warmly at Vera.

“Oh no,” Lyra said at once. “Whatever she said—it was a lie.”

The teacher laughed. “No, all good things, I promise! She loves you two very much.”

“How’s she doing?” Will asked.

“She’s doing very well. She follows the rules she sees sense in.”

Will wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. He glanced sternly at Vera. “And the rules she doesn’t see sense in?”

“She comes around once the point of it is explained,” the teacher said. She didn’t sound angry, so Will decided Vera probably wasn’t being a brat. “She’s very advanced academically. Has she ever been to school before?”

“No,” Lyra said, her voice full and bursting with pride. “We’ve been teaching her a bit over the years, but she’s never been to a proper school ‘til now.”

“She’s clever. And imaginative, too! Her writing on what she wanted to be when she grows up had me in stitches…here, let me show you…it’s just in the classroom. Do you mind?”

“No,” Will and Lyra chorused eagerly.

They followed the woman and her beaver dæmon into the school building. Vera’s classroom was one of the first on the left. She went over to a basket on a nearby table, rummaged through it for a moment, and came back carrying Vera’s unmistakable work. Will recognized her drawing style, all bright colors and soft lines.

“There you go,” she said.

Will took the paper. Lyra shifted Vera—who still didn’t want to get out of Lyra’s arms—and leaned over Will’s shoulder to read it.

“Vera, your drawing is _lovely_ ,” Lyra said sweetly. Vera twisted to look at her own work. She beamed proudly.

“It’s me and I’m a grown up, see, I’m wearing lipstick.”

“Ah, yes,” Lyra said, amused. “I see that. _Blue_ lipstick.”

Will read the childish writing beneath the picture she’d drawn. “When I grow up, I want to have the stubble kni—” he stopped abruptly. With a flash of realization that felt a bit like ice water down his back, he realized what she’d meant.

“The stubble knife,” his teacher provided. She started laughing. “A barber! What a funny profession for a little girl to choose—I never see that one. And what a silly way to explain it! A ‘stubble knife’!”

Lyra laughed along with the teacher, her laughter forced and thin. She met Will’s eyes briefly. He could tell from her severe expression that she understood what Vera had meant, too.

“Do you mind if we go ahead and take this home?” Will asked, forcing his voice to sound casual. “We’d love to hang it up.”

“Oh, sure, go right ahead!” she allowed. Will smiled at her in thanks. “There is one thing you could help her with at home—my Wiley is telling your dæmons now. She’s quite behind on form control.”

Will couldn’t hear the words being shared between Kirjava, Pan, and Wiley (Max was hovering in the air behind them, eavesdropping), but he was getting tiny bursts of information as it flowed from Kirjava. Vera was the least advanced in her class when it came to controlling her dæmon’s form. Rather, she was the least able to keep her dæmon something small and unobtrusive throughout the day. Most of the other kids’ dæmons had been taught and trained to stay tiny forms in public places, but Max had spent most of today a massive anaconda first, and then a miniature horse later.

Lyra was getting the same information from Pan so that the teacher didn’t have to clarify with much else.

“Do your dæmons practice with hers at home?” the teacher wondered.

It hadn’t even occurred to Will that that was something that _should_ be practiced. Lyra had grown up wild, never having to control Pan’s forms, and Will hadn’t had a dæmon as a child at all. How could they have known to start teaching her that?

“No,” Will said honestly. “We’ll work on it, though.”

“Why does her dæmon have to be small?” Lyra asked. Her voice was polite enough, but Will could tell she didn’t like what Pan and Kirjava were being asked to do.

“Well, can you imagine this classroom with multiple massive anacondas in it?” the teacher pointed out. “Kids would trip for one. And accidental touching incidents would double. We can’t have that, of course. Dæmons typically settle as smaller animals for a reason; it’s better for society, easier.”

Lyra didn’t like _that,_ either. She looked ready to say something else, but Will stepped in (because he _did_ understand what the teacher was saying.)

“We’ll work on it. Thank you for letting us know. We had no idea she was behind on that developmental milestone.”

They said their goodbyes, Vera leaned forward and planted a kiss on her teacher’s cheek without even thinking about it, and then they began their walk home. Lyra’s angry words burst from her the second they stepped from the school.

“She’s not behind on _anything_!” she raged. She looked down at Pan and Kirjava. “And I don’t want you two telling Max he can’t be what he wants to be, either! Maximus!”

Max turned into a dove and flew up near Lyra’s face so he could hear her better. “Yes?” he asked.

“You be an anaconda if you _want_ to be an anaconda.”

He did a few happy twists and dives in the air. “Okay!”

“She had a point, Lyra,” Will said evenly. “There’s just not enough room in enclosed, public spaces for every kid’s dæmon to be something massive. It wouldn’t hurt Max to choose his favorite _smaller_ forms while at school. He can be as large as he wants at home.”

Lyra scowled at him. “Yes, it would hurt him! That’s just not _right_ , Will—telling kids what their dæmons can and can’t be!”

“It’s the reality, though, isn’t it? And if that’s the way the world is, we ought to be setting Vera up for success, not failure.”

“But that’s like telling them to pretend to be somebody else—”

“It’s not. It’s just telling Max to try and be something a bit smaller to be polite. He can still choose _what_ small form he takes.”

“How about you two ask _Max_ how he feels about it before you get into it?” Kirjava interrupted.

Pantalaimon called Max over. Max turned into a pine marten and walked beside him. “Max, what do you think about all this?”

“I like being what I want to be. But also, I wouldn’t want anybody to step on me by accident,” Max answered. “We like when I’m a coati or a platypus. Those are small.”

Will looked over at Lyra. She still didn’t seem too happy about it, but Vera had fallen asleep in her arms, and it was difficult to be cross with their adorable daughter snoozing in her arms. He took her when they were halfway there and carried her the rest of the way to give Lyra’s arms a break.

“I just don’t want them controlling her,” Lyra admitted after they’d settled Vera down on the sofa in the kitchen. “Not her thoughts, her ideas, or her dæmon.”

“I know. I just don’t think what they’re asking is that controlling,” he said. “A bigger worry is this.” He held up Vera’s artwork and writing about her future career. Lyra sat down at the table and slumped down in her chair.

“I don’t know what we do about that. How do we coach her to keep her entire life a secret? That’s so much for her…she’s still so little…how can we explain all of this without frightening her? We can’t tell her not to tell anything about us without her wanting to know why, and we can’t exactly tell her it’s because the Church thinks she’s the antichrist and wants her dead, either.” She shook her head bitterly. “What’s she want the subtle knife for, anyway?”

It made sense to Will. All his stories about the subtle knife focused on the good things about it. “She’s probably tired of the traveling we do every six months or so to get back to that door, to switch worlds. She probably thinks her life would be better if we could just cut through wherever we were.”

It probably would.

“Well, she can’t tell her teacher about the subtle knife or the other world. What if Gloria overheard and told the priest?”

Will nodded. He felt extremely tired then. “I know. I’ll handle it. I kept secrets when I was little, too. I know how to do it, and I can teach her, too. I just wish I didn’t have to.”

He longed for a world where Vera didn’t have to keep secrets or hide parts of her identity, but no such world existed (not that he could get to, anyway). It was horrifically sad to him that his daughter would end up lonely just as he had been his entire childhood—because she would have to hide things and keep secrets from the world just as he’d had to.

“What were you talking about with that priest, anyway? About the prescription?” Lyra wondered. “Was he in the hospital?”

“Yeah. Just for a refill. I don’t know what I think about him, Lyra.”

He told Lyra all about his weird, motionless dæmon. She scrunched her nose up with disgust.

“I’m not surprised. The Church makes everybody lifeless. It’s no wonder Vera hates him…she’s terrified of dolls.”

“That’s what I said, too,” Will agreed. “It makes more sense, though she must be getting over it because she seemed eager enough to go to church with Gloria.”

“Which is _never_ going to happen,” Lyra added firmly.

“ _Never_.”

Vera didn’t realize that, though. She woke from her nap a half-hour later, alternated between helping Will cook and pestering Lyra as she worked on her thesis, and then she started up again.

“Can I _please_ go play with Gloria at her church? She says they sing songs and they talk to the Authority and the Authority is a giant _giant_ man who lives up in the sky and he made everything and everyone.”

Lyra didn’t hesitate. “The Authority’s not real.”

Will felt she could’ve been a bit more diplomatic about it. “Vera, some people believe in the Authority, but the truth is that he doesn’t exist anymore. Gloria doesn’t know that, though, and you can’t tell her, okay? It would hurt her feelings terribly.”

Vera’s dark brow furrowed. She’d been stirring the soup Will was making, but at that, she stopped.

“They talk to someone who isn’t there for a whole Sunday?” she asked, baffled.

“Doesn’t sound fun, does it?” Lyra muttered. She crossed something out on her paper. Pantalaimon sighed and pushed a different book over to her.

“No. It sounds sad. Why do they talk to someone who is fake? Why not talk to their mummies or their daddies?”

“It comforts people,” Will explained. She listened as he gave her a light crash course in the concept of religion. She listened intently the entire time.

“But how do you _know_ it’s not real?” she wondered skeptically. “We can’t see all the way up there in heaven.”

“Because.” He couldn’t tell her the truth, that he and her mother had watched the Authority dissolve into nothing. _That_ secret was too big to ever think a five-year-old could hold it. “We saw things during the war that proved it.”

“Like what?”

“We’ll tell you when you’re a bit older. You’ve just got to trust us.”

Vera climbed up onto the worktop to sit. She held Max—a bunny—in her lap and stroked his fur as she thought. Will left the pot to simmer and walked over to lean against the worktop beside his daughter.

“Vera, we’ve got to talk about something,” he started.

For the next hour, he broke it all down for her: what things she had to keep secret, why she had to keep them secret, what would happen if she didn’t. He kept things gentle enough not to terrify her, but honest enough that she understood the seriousness of what he was saying. And as he watched her blue eyes become shadowed as the weight of what he was saying sank in, he felt like he’d just destroyed something precious.

“So,” he said at the end of his lecture. He had to clear his throat; it was narrowing dangerously. “What things _must_ you keep secret from _everybody_?” he asked.

She looked at him gravely. “I can’t talk about the other worlds. I can only talk about the world I’m in. I can’t talk about the stubble knife. I can’t talk about Mummy’s real name. I can’t talk about any stories you and Mummy told me about the war. I can’t talk about…” she trailed off.

“Svalbard,” Will provided. “You can’t tell people you were born there. You can’t tell them about Iorek or Aobel. Not even to tell them about things Aobel says in her letters.”

She nodded. Lyra left her thesis and walked over to join them. She lifted up and sat beside Vera on the worktop. Vera cuddled up to her side at once.

“Think of it like a secret game,” Lyra said. “We can make it fun. Where do _you_ want to say you were born?”

Vera thought hard about that. “Atlantis?”

Lyra laughed. Will smiled despite his desolate mood. “Not Atlantis. Somewhere real. Somewhere people will believe.”

“Oh. Hmm…the ocean?”

“Sure. We can say you were born on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Where do you want to say we go every time we leave this world?”

“We sail around the world looking for mermaids!!”

“Fine by me,” Lyra said, and for the next few minutes, Will listened as Lyra—in a way—taught their daughter how to lie with finesse and heart. He wasn’t sure it was something he wanted his daughter to _have_ to know how to do.

He was still feeling down after Vera went to bed. Lyra grabbed his hand as they walked from her room.

“What is it?” she asked.

He looked down at her, his lips pressed into a firm line. “I just wanted better for her. I didn’t want her to have to hide like I did. I didn’t want her to have to lie to stay alive like you did.”

She leaned against the side of his body. “I know. I wanted better than this for her, too.”

“I like how open and honest she is. I hate that…” he trailed off thickly. He was afraid to keep talking. His emotions were surging too wildly; he didn’t want to cry.

“She can’t be open and honest with everybody though, Will. She can still be that way with us, but we can’t have her telling our secrets to strangers because that risks _her_ life.”

He knew that. It didn’t make it any better.

“I hate the Church,” he said, voicing his frustration. They stepped into their room. Will began changing for bed.

“Don’t we all,” muttered Lyra. She pulled her dress over her head and turned to rummage through the drawers on the left side of her wardrobe for her nightclothes. It was a testament to her beauty that Will got a bit stuck looking at her, his bone-deep frustration dimmed and subdued for a moment in time. When she turned around and met his eyes, she smiled at him. “What?” she asked, even though she already knew.

He could’ve told her that she was beautiful, that his affection for her only doubled that beauty, that sometimes he still couldn’t believe that she was his and he was hers—but she’d heard it all before, the words muffled into a half-dozen pillows, and he didn’t need to repeat himself.

“I just keep thinking that they’re the only thing holding us back,” he said instead. It was true. Without the Church, he would’ve been perfectly happy. Without the Church, Vera would be free to live openly and honestly. Without the Church, he would’ve even married Lyra by now. It was _them_ who kept them from it because Lyra didn’t want to have the ceremony without everybody she loved present, and in her world, it wasn’t safe for her to leave that island. It certainly wasn’t safe for her to go back to Jordan, and Will knew that was _really_ where she wanted to be if she ever married.

“I think that, too, sometimes, but also…they’re sort of the reason we’re here,” she shared. She pulled a thin nightie over her head; the soft fabric floated over her body, and when Will crossed the floor to take her into his arms, it was as soft against his skin as he’d thought it’d be. “I mean, if the Church wasn’t causing the sort of trouble that it was causing, I never would have found you that first time…”

He supposed she had a point. But nobody was suggesting they change the past. He didn’t want to wipe the Church from history. He just wanted it gone _now_.

“But you did. And that’s over and done with. Nothing can change that now.”

“I know. It’s just difficult, Will, because I want to do something about the Church, too. I know you want to: I can tell how angry and frustrated you are. But if we do anything at all, we risk Vera’s life.”

Lyra had been steadily working with her Child Protection Board, but anything that ever saw the light of day outside of her organization was published under a pseudonym, and Oakley Street worked tirelessly to keep Lyra’s new location and life secret. What Will wanted was to throw caution to the wind and run off and take them on like they had as kids, bravely and without plans. But they _weren’t_ kids; they _had_ a kid. And everything was different now.

They crawled under the covers together, their dæmons joining them to curl up behind their respective humans, and Will curled his body around hers and held her close. He pressed his face into her sweet hair. He tried to relax, but his mind was spinning from the events of the day. After talking for a few more minutes, she drifted off to sleep before him. He was awake long after her, and when he finally went to sleep, it was light and fitful with stressful dreams that always involved running.

* * *

 

They spent nearly all of Saturday on the beach. They built a replica of Jordan College in the sand, Max turned into a dolphin and played mermaids with Vera for a good two hours, Elaine, Mary, and Malcolm brought a picnic lunch, and then Will and Lyra swam with Vera for so long their fingers and toes pruned up and Will thought he might never clean all the sand from his body.

Vera was happy and exhausted as Will carried her back home. The sun was setting; it cast deep orange shadows across Lyra’s face as they walked. They had largely spent the entire day ignoring their problems, but Will was glad. They had needed a day to be as normal of a family as they could.

“I’m going to carry her up,” Will decided after Pantalaimon had climbed up to the tree house and lowered the rope ladder. He didn’t often carry her up now that she was getting bigger, but she was so peacefully asleep that he didn’t want to wake her. He felt she’d be too drowsy to safely climb up herself, anyway. He held Vera securely with one arm and used his right hand to hold onto the ladder. It was difficult but simple enough, and soon he was standing upright in the sitting room. Lyra joined him, pulled the ladder up and locked it against the rail as they did every night, and they settled their child atop her covers.

“She really needs a bath,” Will whispered, frowning at the salty soles of her feet. Her hair was still damp with seawater.

“She’ll be okay ‘til tomorrow,” dismissed Lyra.

They stayed up together for a few hours more, taking advantage of Vera’s early bedtime, and by the time they went to sleep, they slipped into a deep stupor. Will woke when Lyra suddenly did, her breath leaving her in an alarmed gasp, and he was automatically on edge.

“What?” he said, peering through the moonlight at her alarmed expression. She scrambled from the bed. A second later, Pantalaimon hurdled in.

“I was just out on the deck—Lyra—”

“I know,” she said. She was shoving shoes onto her feet blindly.

“ _I_ don’t!” Will said loudly, a bit angrily. “What’s wrong, Pan?”

“Vera’s snuck out—her bed’s empty—she’s lowered the ladder—”

“Kirjava!” Will cried, interrupting Pantalaimon. She was sprawled on her back, deeply asleep, but she woke easily enough at his panicked cry. “Run after her—go!”

Kirjava shot off the bed at once. She and Pantalaimon streaked from the room and scaled down the tree in seconds. Lyra and Will climbed down the ladder as quickly as they could. The forest was confusing; the moonlight made it seem vaster and different. Will wasn’t sure what direction to head in.

“Where would she go?”

“Your mum’s? Malcolm’s?” Lyra suggested, frenzied. She turned in place and looked helplessly around. Will felt just as lost. The direction they took depended on where they thought she’d gone. Which way had their dæmons gone? They would’ve been able to catch her scent and know which way to go…

“THIS WAY!” Kirjava shouted. Her voice carried easily enough through the silent forest. Will took off in the direction of her voice at once. He didn’t know if it was from his panic or from how quickly he was ripped from sleep, but everything felt eerily dreamlike as if he was stuck in a nightmare. All he knew was that he had to find her. The thought of her getting lost forever—or stolen—

He pushed himself to run so hard that he nearly stumbled and fell forward. Lyra was just a little ways behind him, unable to run as quickly as him on her shorter legs, but she saw her first.

“ _Vera_!” she cried.

As Will dodged a wide cypress tree, he saw her further down the path. Pantalaimon was holding Max to make sure they didn’t try to run off, but neither Vera nor Max looked liable to run from them. Vera appeared guilty already, and when Will came to a trembling stop in front of her, he realized from her clothing—a nice dress, her best shoes—that she had snuck out to go to _church_. She had disobeyed them _twice_ : first by sneaking out again, secondly by trying to go to church when they told her she couldn’t. She could’ve fallen climbing down in the dark—she could’ve gotten stolen—she could’ve been recognized—she could have _died_ …

All at once, his concern turned into red-hot fury. He felt the moisture from the ground below him seep through his pajama bottoms as he fell to his knees. He reached out and grabbed her upper arms.

“What do you think you’re _doing_?!” he bellowed, his voice booming up and through the surrounding trees. Vera leaned as far back from his angry face as she could, her eyes wide with shock, her lips trembling. “You were told you are _NOT ALLOWED_ to sneak off without us! You are _not_ allowed to go to church! You are _NOT ALLOWED TO LIE TO US_!”

His anger was only growing. Didn’t she understand? Didn’t she know what her parents had gone through to keep her safe, what _Lyra_ had gone through to keep her safe? And she was going to do _this_?

“You cannot _ever_ go to that church! Do you understand me?! THEY WILL KILL YOU, VERA!” His voice had risen to a shout without him planning on it. He couldn’t control the words as they came from him. He just knew he felt close to weeping from fear and he had to make sure she _never_ tried this again. “They will _kill you_ and you will _never_ see me or Mummy ever again! _Ever_! Do you understand?!”

She was crying in earnest now, her pale eyes wide with fright, her eyes that were so like Lyra’s…

Kirjava was in Will’s face a second later, hissing and spitting, and before Will could process much of anything, she’d reached out and scratched his cheek, hurting her and hurting him, and making him drop his hands from Vera.

She backed away from him, gasping with sobs, and Will was certain it was the worst thing he’d ever seen when she ran shaking into Lyra’s arms (ran shaking from _him_ ). Will met Lyra’s eyes. She was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Her hold on Vera was tentative. Will guessed she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to comfort her or scold her.

He knew that he had gone too far and been too harsh, but his blood was still surging and his heart hammering, and in his panicked rage, he felt it would all be worth it if it meant that Vera understood and would never try this ever again. It would be worth it now if she could stay safe later.

But as he calmed down, that surety faded quickly. He could feel guilt and horror seeping into him. The scratch on his cheek seared; he felt blood dripping down his cheek. Kirjava wouldn’t even look at him. She was comforting Max as he trembled. He had betrayed her—betrayed himself.

He didn’t know what to do. He watched Lyra stroke Vera’s hair as Vera clung to her and cried, unsure, physically sick from the horrid emotions churning inside his heart.

“Vera,” Lyra said, and in contrast to Will’s booming voice, hers sounded unusually soft. She pulled Vera back by her shoulders and wiped her tears away. Will’s heart lurched to think that he had put them there. “Look at Mummy. Look at me.”

She did. Tears still slid pitifully down her face all the while.

“What Daddy said…that’s serious. He’s telling the truth. _Do_ you understand?”

Vera continued blubbering. She nodded quickly.

“You mustn’t _ever_ sneak off again. Okay?”

She nodded again and threw herself back into Lyra’s arms, wailing some more. This time, Lyra folded her tight into her embrace. She looked over and met Will’s eyes. He didn’t know what his face looked like, but if it was anything close to what he was feeling inside, he must’ve looked tortured.

He didn’t say a word as they walked back. He didn’t know _what_ to say. Lyra carried Vera up to the rope ladder, Will pulled it up and resisted the urge to chop it off right then and there, and then they walked towards the bedrooms.

“Do you want to sleep with me and Daddy or in your own bed?” Lyra asked Vera softly.

Will was so afraid she’d say her own bed, so afraid that he had terrified her, that she’d hate him forever now (that she’d fear him.) He couldn’t look at anybody as he waited for her answer.

“Yours,” Vera sniffled.

Lyra set her down on the bed. Vera crawled beneath the covers and reached for Will’s pillow, pulling it down into her arms in the absence of her blanket. She pressed her damp face into it and sniffled continuously. Lyra perched at the foot of the bed and looked at Will in dismay.

“I don’t know what to do,” she breathed, where only Will could hear.

Will didn’t either. There were things he regretted so much he could’ve been sick from it: yelling so close to her little face, holding her arms so she couldn’t back away, telling her so bluntly that the Church would kill her. But she had been wrong, too. She knew she wasn’t supposed to sneak out. They had tried being nice and giving her another chance, and she had repaid them by betraying their trust. Now what? Firm was too firm, but soft was too soft. Will felt miserable.

“Me neither,” he said back. His eyes burned fiercely. He looked away. The guilt had multiplied within his chest and wrapped completely around his heart, in a crushing vice-grip, by the time the first tears slipped past. He felt Lyra’s soft hand wrap around his left one. She tugged once and he complied. He fell down on the bed beside her and accepted her hug. He hid his face in the crook of her neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her.

“You shouldn’t’ve yelled like that,” she said honestly.

“I know I shouldn’t have.”

“But she needs to know we’re serious, too, doesn’t she?” she added. She seemed as lost as Will felt.

“She does, but that wasn’t the way, Lyra,” Will whispered, certain of that.

“No,” she agreed. “I don’t think so, either.”

He could’ve cried with as much abandon as Vera had been, but he needed to fix his mistake. He wasn’t even sure how to. But he knew he had to try. So he moved back from Lyra’s arms and her unconditional embrace and slid over to lie beside Vera, knowing full and well she might push him away, knowing full and well that, if she did, it would shatter his heart.

“Vera?” he asked quietly.

Max peeked out of her hair (he had made himself into a tiny moth). A moment later, Vera lowered his pillow. They locked eyes—tears brimming beneath both their strong, dark brows—and then Vera scooted forward and into Will’s arms, as if nothing at all had happened.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” she wept, and that broke Will’s heart worse than if she’d pushed him away and told him he was the worst dad in the entire world.

“No,” he whispered brokenly. He cradled her close and struggled to keep from sobbing like a child. “ _I’m_ sorry, Vera. I should not have yelled at you. People shouldn’t yell in people’s faces like that. It’s mean and hurtful…” he almost said _I just lost control because I was so worried_ , but he stopped, not wanting to make excuses for himself. He was an adult. He knew better. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

She was crying again. “I d-d-don’t like when you yell at me,” she said.

“I don’t either,” he assured her. “I was so worried, Vera.”

“B-Because they’ll kill me and I’ll die?”

Will hesitated. He still wasn’t sure if it was right to tell her that or not, but he had, and there was no point denying his words.

“Yeah,” he admitted softly. “They’re horrible people, Vera. _Horrible_. They wanted to kill you before you were even born. When you were still in Mummy’s belly. She had to run from them and hide…then she had to tell them that you died when you were a baby so that we could come here…if they found out that you were really alive…” he trailed off.

He’d told her bits and pieces of this when they’d last talked about the importance of keeping secrets, but he hadn’t ever told her exactly what the Church had wanted to do with her.

“They wanted to kill Mummy when she was little, too,” Will added, so hopefully she wouldn’t think something was wrong with _her_. “She had to hide and run. We have tried so hard to protect you. How do you think it makes us feel when we try that hard to keep you safe and you run away and put yourself in danger anyway?”

“Bad,” she answered, her voice still quivering with tears.

“Horrible. It makes us feel horrible. Because we love you so much. _I_ love you so much, Vera. I need you to be safe. I didn’t mean to yell at you or frighten you, but I do need you to understand how serious this is.”

“I understand, Daddy,” she whispered immediately.

His sweet little daughter was so distraught that he believed her without hesitation. Even if she hadn’t fully grasped what he’d said, she’d been so traumatized by the experience that he was certain she’d never try it again.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked after that.

He frowned. He kissed her hair. “No. But what you did was very serious. We’re going to have to talk about it in the morning.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Are you angry with _me_?” Will shot back.

“No, but you hurt my feelings. I don’t want you to yell ever again.”

“I won’t.” That much he knew for certain.

“I know. ‘Cause Kirjava scratched you…your own dæmon! I never saw any dæmon ever do that before. I knew you didn’t mean it,” she said wisely.

 _Kirjava_. He’d have a much harder time getting his dæmon to forgive him. He didn’t even know where she was now. He hadn’t seen her since shortly after she scratched him.

Vera snuggled up to Will, and when Lyra joined them under the covers, Lyra tucked her body around Vera’s to snuggle her, too.

“Are you still awake?” Lyra asked their daughter.

“Yes,” Vera said sleepily.

“Why do you want to go to church so badly?” wondered Lyra.

Will hadn’t even thought to ask that. He was still trying to process everything else that’d happened that night. It was a fair question.

“I wanted to see if I saw the Authority,” she answered at once. She seemed well-aware of her own motives. “So many people think he lives there so maybe they see him or talk to him and maybe he talks back. I wanted to see.”

“But he’s dead, Vera,” Lyra told her honestly. “Daddy and I saw him die.”

“Then what are all these people talking to every Sunday?” Vera asked, confused.

“The air, I suppose. I dunno,” Lyra said.

“But wouldn’t they know if it was a big make-believe lie?”

“Not always. People can be delusional, you know.” A pause. “That means they don’t have much sense.”

“ _Or_ ,” Vera countered, “maybe they know how to look. ‘Cause I can’t see Nana’s dæmon or Mary’s dæmon, but they can, and Daddy can sometimes, and I can’t see them but they’re still there even though I can’t.”

Will was at first astounded by the caliber of her reasoning, but then he remembered that one of her teachers/family members was a philosophy scholar. Malcolm had regularly lectured philosophy at Vera when she was learning to talk after Will told him all about the studies from his world that showed the more words toddlers were exposed to the smarter they became. He used to joke that her first real word would be _Aristotle_ or _Kant_ , but it’d been ‘dada’ all the same.

“There’s nothing to look for,” Lyra persisted. “You don’t know how horrid the Church is, what terrible things they’ve done and tried to do. There’s nothing good about church, especially not for you and me. They would kill us if they could.”

“Why?” Vera asked. She yawned a moment later. She couldn’t fight her exhaustion anymore.

“Because they know that we always look out for people and do what’s right,” Lyra explained. “They don’t like that because they spend so much time doing what’s wrong.”

It was an interesting way to explain it. Will wouldn’t’ve thought to explain it like that. Vera took to that explanation at once. It seemed to make it easier for her to classify the Church as the Bad ones and her parents as the Good ones.

“They tried to hurt people loads of times and Daddy and I wouldn’t let them, and now they think you’ll grow up and stop them, too,” Lyra added.

“I _will_ ,” Vera mumbled. She yawned again. “‘Cause I do the right thing. ‘Cept for when I sneaked out.”

“Yes, that was the wrong thing,” Will said quickly, hoping to get that idea firmly in her mind.

“Yes,” Vera agreed.

Both Will and Lyra stopped talking to her so she could drift off—she was clearly exhausted—and as soon as she had, Will sensed Kirjava slinking back into the room. Sure enough, he felt the bed shift slightly as she leapt up. She went and curled up behind _Lyra’s_ back. How long could one stay mad at themselves? Will was worried because he felt the answer was _a very long time._

“It’s okay, Kirjava,” Lyra told her quietly. “Vera’s fine, we’ve talked with her, everything’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she insisted. “What he did was unacceptable. She’s a little child. You don’t yell like that at little children.”

“Maybe not in a perfect world, but she did something really dangerous and frightening, Kirjava.”

“So you think it was okay?” Kirjava challenged.

“I think it was the only time Will’s ever genuinely reminded me of my father before, and Serafina and Malcolm are always comparing them. For a second there, I saw whatever they see, and I didn’t like that much. My father wasn’t very nice to me. But Will’s nothing like my father…he lost his temper one time, so what? I’ve lost my temper with her loads of times. He didn’t hurt her, he apologized, and we talked about it. You don’t need to keep on punishing him. That’s not right. He’s upset enough with himself. Dæmons should comfort their humans. He already knows he was wrong,” scolded Lyra.

Kirjava had to be able to feel the guilt and torment that Will was feeling. Maybe she just assumed it was her own emotions she was feeling.

“I was afraid we were going to lose control entirely,” Kirjava admitted to Lyra, and this time she didn’t sound angry, she sounded scared. “She was so tiny and so frightened…we were so _angry_ …I was worried we’d squeeze her arms too hard without meaning to.”

“He wouldn’t. He didn’t.”

“Well, I scratched his face, didn’t I?”

“And you’re him. So you both stopped yourselves.”

Lyra wasn’t worried, but Kirjava’s words made Will want to cry again. It was a dark fear he’d been harping on, too. The thought of accidentally hurting her was too much to bear. He just wanted to protect her and teach her how to protect herself. Why was it so difficult to discipline? She wasn’t even a difficult child…he just wasn’t good at this part of being a father. He guessed that’s what happened when a child grew up without ever being disciplined before. He had no example to follow.

He almost said _I just want to keep her safe,_ but he didn’t need to. He thought the words and Kirjava felt them. He knew she understood. Her irritation at him wasn’t just hers, it was his, too.

He reached over Lyra and towards Kirjava and held his left hand out (an apology). Kirjava arched up and brushed against his hand (an apology). Both were accepted.

* * *

 

It was the first time they weren’t walking her into her classroom. Lyra was nervous, but she was bravely hiding that fact.

“You’re sure you don’t want us to walk you in?” Will asked. They came to a stop outside the school building. Vera was equipped with a handmade book bag from her nana, a mismatched assortment of fancy office supplies from Lyra, Mary, and Malcolm, and one of Will’s medical texts that she insisted she _had_ to bring with her. Will had parted with it easily. He’d been a bit overly pliable since yelling at her in the woods.

Vera beamed and shook her head. She was practically buzzing with excitement. The fact that she’d been grounded all day yesterday and didn’t leave the treehouse at all probably had something to do with her eagerness to return to school, but Lyra had to admit she liked seeing her so excited about education.

“I know how to get there. It’s ten steps in, then you go left, then there you are. My hook for my bag and my coat is the middlest one. My seat is right next to the turtle tank.”

Lyra couldn’t help but smile. She reached out and smoothed a few wayward hairs on Vera’s head. Her dark hair was pulled back in neat plaits and it only served to make her dark brow all the more noticeable and expressive; it was one of her cutest features in Lyra’s opinion, though she wasn’t sure if she thought that because it was true or if she thought that because her brow was Will’s.

“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

“Yes I _do_ ,” Vera said with a nod.

Lyra kneeled down and reached forward to hold her little face in her hands gently. She peered at her seriously. “And when you’re playing with Gloria…”

“I’m just playing with her. Not talking about church.”

“Right,” Lyra nodded. “What else?”

“I can’t tell any of the Big Secrets.”

“Right. What else?”

Vera furrowed her eyebrows over her blue eyes as she thought. Lyra waited patiently.

“I… _can’t_ go over to play with her…but she can come over and play with me. Right?”

“Right,” Lyra said again. It was something she and Will had decided after much thought. They didn’t think it was right to tell Vera she couldn’t be Gloria’s friend at all (it wasn’t Gloria’s fault she’d got left at a church-run orphanage), but they had to be sensible about it.

“Do you think you can do all of that?” Will asked her.

Vera nodded fervently, her eyes wide. “ _Yes_. I _never_ want to be stuck home dusting all day ever again. And I _don’t_ like cleaning under my fingernails.”

They’d made her do chores most of the day yesterday. She’d gone stir-crazy by midafternoon. It had proven to be a much better punishment than anything else they’d tried, and so far, it was working well. Lyra thought it was just going to be about finding what worked for _Vera_. Ignoring her exploits hadn’t worked—she’d walked right over them and done it again—and yelling at her hadn’t worked—she was too sensitive to respond to it—so Lyra could only hope that this would. (To be safe, though, they’d installed an alarm on their bedroom door so that if it was opened, it would go off and wake Lyra and Will, meaning Vera could sneak from her room to theirs but then could get no further since she’d have to get through their room to get to the deck.)

“All right,” Will said firmly. He leaned over to kiss her goodbye and then stood straight and steady. “Bye, Vera.”

Lyra followed his example. She kissed her daughter once, waved, and then stepped back. “Bye! We love you!”

Vera hefted her bag on her tiny shoulders and walked determinately towards the entrance of the school. Will and Lyra waited and watched. Lyra knew he was fighting the same urge she was (to run forward and meet their daughter, to walk her in, or to pick her back up and keep her with them always.) They restrained themselves.

A few feet from the opened door, Vera stopped. Max turned from a squirrel to a caiman to an insect too small to see and then into a platypus. Lyra assumed they’d walk in after their form had been dealt with, but Vera turned around to make sure she and Will were still there, and then she was running full speed at them. Will kneeled down and opened his arms; Vera crashed right into them.

“I need a goodbye hug too, not just a goodbye kiss, a goodbye kiss _and hug_ ,” she said.

Will hugged her tightly. “Of course, silly us.”

She moved to Lyra next. Lyra clutched her to her heart and held her close for as long as Vera permitted. Once she’d stepped back from her mum’s embrace, she turned to scamper back off to the entrance, pausing once in the opened doorway to turn around again and wave. Lyra and Will waved back.

“Have a good day!” Lyra called.

They watched her disappear. Lyra took Will’s hand as they turned to walk away. She was extremely aware of the weighty responsibility they’d placed on their five-year-old’s shoulders, and she knew it bothered Will a lot, but she didn’t see how much could be done for it. Anyway, Vera was probably the best child to be tasked with so much lying: she was born from two people who’d lied their entire childhoods, Lyra recreationally, Will for survival. If any child could do it, she could.

“Better this than being hidden away like a prisoner,” Lyra reminded Will softly. He seemed a bit downhearted.

“I suppose,” he said.

“You know I’m right. She would rather lie and get to experience school and friends and a life outside of just her family than hide inside all the time. She said so.”

Will tightened his grip on her hand. “I’m just worried. About what comes next.”

Lyra looked up at him, confused. “What comes next?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m worried about.”

She felt instinctively that this had something to do with the angel between the worlds and the promise he’d made to him in order to get to Lyra the first time. He had never really given up his guilt over that exchange. Lyra thought he’d done the sensible thing. It’s what she would’ve done: lied to get what she needed to have. But Will felt he’d somehow betrayed his own principles and his daughter that day and time hadn’t really lessened that belief.

“Well, I can tell you what comes next,” she said blithely. “Food, bed, bath. It’s your day off, and I’ve said ‘sod it’ and sent my thesis off to Dame Hannah, so _we’re_ celebrating.”

He groaned. “You _haven’t_ sent it off really, have you? She’s just going to send it back to you again and you’re going to be in a mood for ages—”

“It’s done this time! Properly! Right, Pan? Pan! Come back here and tell Will we did the thesis correctly!”

Pantalaimon had been up ahead with Kirjava, but he ran back over to join them.

“It’s…done…more or less correctly,” he told Will. “We cut a few corners, but hopefully Dame Hannah won’t notice.”

“She’ll notice.”

Will was probably right. Lyra just couldn’t stand looking at the damn thing for a moment more. It had to go either into an envelope or into a fire, and she felt an envelope was probably a more mature choice.

“Food, bed, bath,” Will repeated their inventory to himself. “You ever consider how boring that probably sounds to an outsider? It’s nearly the daily agenda for a five-year-old.”

“It’s not,” Lyra scoffed. “You’ll notice bed is _before_ the bath, and I didn’t say a thing about sleeping, did I?”

His grip on her hand tightened again; this time, he pulled her closer so that she was leaning against his side, let go of her hand, and wrapped his arm around her waist instead. She happily wrapped hers around his, too, and delighted in the shape of his body against hers.

“I suppose you didn’t,” he said.

“So it’s not boring.”

“No, _not_ boring,” he agreed lowly. She loved when his voice got like that—intense, smooth, electrifying—and she leaned even further against his side in response. “But you know I was talking about the long-term. Not what was going to happen _today_.”

“I know that,” she said. “But you’ve got to stop worrying about that sort of stuff. You’re only going to upset yourself.”

She sensed that he was looking at her skeptically. “You’re one to talk. As if you’re not going to get your alethiometer out later and do just the same.”

Lyra shrugged. “Well, if I did, there’d be a method to my madness; your madness just upsets you. But I’ll have you know I don’t do that any longer.”

He stopped walking. She looked up at him. He was peering at her in confusion. “Don’t do _what_ any longer? You were just studying your alethiometer this morning.”

“I don’t ask it about Vera’s future anymore is what I mean. It gets cross with me for one, and for two, I’ve decided it’s not right.”

His lips twitched up into a brief, amused smile. Lyra scowled at him.

“I’m serious!”

“What do you spend so long asking it, then?” he wondered suspiciously.

She shrugged again. “Other stuff. And then, while I’m in the process of interpreting answers, I usually stumble upon a level of meaning I’ve never seen before, or a combination that’s new, and studying those takes time.”

Lately, she’d been asking it all about Oxford, about home. When they might get to return, when it would be safe, those sorts of things. But she wasn’t going to tell Will that. She knew it made him upset whenever she expressed her homesickness because he still felt—for whatever reason—that he was somehow to blame for her being cast from her home.

“I guess there’s plenty to ask it,” he agreed. He tugged her back against his side and they resumed walking. By the time they made it home, Lyra felt at ease with the things that had caused both her and Will so much torment earlier in the week: Vera’s temporary absence, the uncertainties of the future. For one of the first times, she felt that this could become routine.  


	9. twist until we fall apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to those commenting and leaving kudos!! Sorry for the long wait; it's been a really busy month. Thanks again and hope you enjoy!

L,

The photo you sent of V made me smile. The abandoned thesis did not. The first sixty or so pages are too brilliant to be followed by your last twenty. You need to provide more background information; I don’t feel you’ve adequately expounded upon the cultural implications of the panserbjørne’s trading agreements with the Gyptians and the witches. Likewise, you provided a wealth of detail and knowledge on Gyptian culture and Lake Enara culture, but you’ve ghosted right over the other two clans involved with panserbjørne trade. As I said before, it’s best to leave them out of things entirely if you’re not able to obtain more information on them. Fix these things, send it back, and you’ll have a damn good thesis on your hands, and I’ll be ready to address you as _Dr_ S.

All my best to V, M, and W. I hope to make it for a visit this time next year with a copy of your diploma in hand. Get to work. 

Best of luck,  
H

* * *

Lyra tossed the letter aside with a scowl. She let her face drop to the tabletop afterwards. 

“I quit,” she groaned. 

She heard Vera’s too-large shoes tapping over the wooden floors as she approached her. A second later, Vera’s small hand settled on Lyra’s arm. Vera stroked her forearm gently. 

“Quitters never win, Mummy,” she said soothingly. “That’s because they quit the game so then they lose.”

“She’s not wrong, you know,” Will commented. There was a pause. “Vera, I told you to take your mum’s shoes off. You’re going to trip.”

“I _like_ them,” argued Vera. She was still stroking Lyra’s arm. “Are you happy now, Mummy?”

“No. I just can’t do it,” Lyra mumbled. The thought of going back and revising her entire thesis again made her feel sick.

Vera huffed. “Well if you _don’t_ do it of course you _can’t_ do it. That doesn’t even make sense. If—if—if—if I—if I—”

“Slow down,” Pan reminded her gently. 

Vera took a deep breath obediently. “ _If I_ never even tried to read really big words I would _never_ read really big words because I never did it!”

Again, Vera wasn’t _wrong_. Lyra just wasn’t in the mood to be optimistic. Thankfully, Will sensed that. He didn’t give her a peptalk. Instead, he slid a generous-sized dish of trifle in front of her and said: “Here. Eat this and dry it up.”

“I’m not crying,” she scoffed. 

“Moping’s like crying. You’re going to be fine. Take a break from your thesis and then come back to it when you’re feeling less burnt out.”

He stuck a spoon into her dish and went back to the worktop to begin dishing out Vera’s. Lyra sighed. She propped her elbow on the tabletop, rested her face in her hand, and sadly stuck her spoon into her pudding. She gagged upon setting the spoonful in her mouth; the sudden intensity of sherry surprised her. 

“You’ve spiked it!” she said around a mouthful of trifle. 

“Only ours. Don’t like it?” 

She was able to appreciate the sweet flavor and layered textures after the shock of the alcohol wore off. She just hadn’t expected it. “No, it’s good. Just didn’t expect it.”

“I figured you’d need it once I saw Dame Hannah’s letter. I knew she’d send your thesis back.”

“If you say ‘ _I told you so’_ I’ll…” 

“You’ll…?” he mocked. 

She narrowed her eyes at him, but she struggled to come up with any sort of punishment that wouldn’t also be a punishment for her, too. He turned back to the other dish of trifle (Vera’s). Lyra felt Vera’s hands press against her left thigh as she began climbing up onto Lyra’s lap. Lyra slid her chair back some so Vera had more space, and as soon as she was seated comfortably in her lap, Vera reached for her spoon. Lyra handed it to her. Vera had just shoveled a huge mouthful of trifle into her mouth when Will turned around. His eyes widened slightly. 

“Lyra, don’t let her have that! I’ve got hers right here!”

He was balancing a small dish in his palm, but Vera quite liked Lyra’s, apparently. 

“Mmmmmm,” Vera hummed as she chewed. 

“Oh, relax,” Lyra told Will. She took the spoon from Vera and took another bite herself. “A little alcohol never killed anyone.”

“Actually, yeah, that’s exactly what it has done before.”

“I like it,” Vera told Will. Her tone made it clear she was defending Lyra. 

“I’ll bet you do. _This_ one is yours.” He slid the dish in front of her. She grabbed the spoon from it and ate a bite at once. She kicked her legs happily as she chewed.

“This one is best ‘cause it’s sweeter and it has pineapple,” Vera decided, her mouth still full of trifle. Lyra wrapped her arms around her and kissed the top of her head affectionately. “Mal’s is better, though,” Vera added. 

Will feigned outrage. “What?!”

“Yeah, he’s the best cooker, but you are best at other stuff, so it’s okay,” Vera soothed. “Like reading to me and fixing me when I got a skinned knee.”

“Ah, well, at least I’ve got that.”

Lyra had inhaled half her dessert while listening to them chat. She set the bowl down and leaned forward to catch Vera’s eye. “What about me? What am I best at?” 

Vera didn’t miss a beat. “Stories,” she said, her eyes sparkling with adoration. Lyra was exceptionally flattered. 

* * *

 

She stretched out the bedtime routine so it took up as much time as possible, mainly because she didn’t want to have to look at her thesis. If she read to her daughter until she was drowsy herself, she’d just have to go straight on to bed because she couldn’t get any good work done when she was exhausted. It made sense to her, and Vera was quite happy to listen to her mum and dad read _Gardening in the Tropics_ in shifts until she fell asleep. It worked out just as she’d planned, too: she was yawning every couple of seconds by the time they tiptoed from Vera’s room. 

“Time for bed,” she said, drowsy and happy. She wanted to crawl into her soft, warm bed exactly as much as she _didn’t_ want to open the thick envelope containing her returned thesis. She couldn’t wait. 

She knew Will was just as eager as she was. He’d worked an early shift at the hospital—though there was hardly anything for him to do, per usual—and they’d had a late night the night prior thanks to Vera. She’d woken every couple of hours with nightmares, even when they moved her to their bed. Lyra hoped things were better tonight. She’d seemed fine today, anyway, so Lyra didn’t think too much of it. 

She and Will readied for bed in record time, crawled beneath the covers, and slipped off to sleep quickly. Lyra woke what felt like ages afterwards, jarred from her sleep by some sort of sound, though once she sat up she couldn’t remember what she’d heard. She automatically feared Vera was sneaking out again, but she could see in the dim moonlight filtering through the room that the lock on her and Will’s bedroom door was still secure. She ran her fingers through her hair tiredly and yawned. She decided she’d imagined it and had just snuggled back up to Will and Kirjava to go back to sleep when she heard something again: a hard, brief tap against the side of the treehouse, like something being thrown at it. Lyra sat up again. 

“What’s that?” she hissed at Pan. He’d woken when she did and was sitting alert at the foot of the bed, his fur bristled. 

“I don’t know. I’m going to go check.”

“Me too,” Lyra decided. She was still so drowsy that she wasn’t feeling much panic or worry, but she _did_ know that she wasn’t letting Pan go out there alone. She pushed her feet into her slippers, threw a dressing gown over her nightie, and undid the door lock and alarm so she could go out onto the rope bridge outside her and Will’s bedroom. She left the door carefully cracked behind her, stepped lightly onto the bridge, and squinted out into the darkness. She held onto the rope and stood in the cool, pleasant breeze. The bridge creaked softly as it gently swayed. All she could hear for the first few seconds was the sound of rustling leaves, frogs, and cicadas. And then…

“Lyra!”

Lyra spun around to face the opposite direction where Pantalaimon was looking. She saw what he saw at once. She relaxed at first; Elaine was standing below the place the rope ladder usually was, tossing rocks up to get somebody’s attention, and Elaine wasn’t a threat. But then her relief turned to confusion. _Why_ was Elaine here in the middle of the night?

“Elaine?” Lyra called loudly. “Is everything all right?” 

“No,” she said frantically. She sounded deeply upset. “It’s not okay. I need Will—where’s Will? I have to count it—I don’t know—somebody’s coming and—”

Lyra shivered in the light breeze. A sense of foreboding washed over her. “I’ll get Will. Pan will let the ladder down. Hang on.”

Pantalaimon shot across their treetop home while Lyra hurried back into her dark bedroom. She sat down on the edge of Will’s side of the bed and set her hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. “Will.”

He mumbled something about nightmares that Lyra couldn’t decipher. 

“No, it’s not Vera. It’s your mum. She’s outside in the dark, she says something’s wrong, I dunno what’s going on but she asked for you…”

Will sat up at once. 

“My mum?” His voice was serious and completely awake. Lyra nodded. 

“Yeah, she was throwing rocks or something up here to wake us, Pan went to let the ladder down…she said something about counting something and somebody coming…I don’t know, Will.”

His lips pressed into a firm line. “I do,” he said, his voice heavy and tired, and without saying anything else, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. Lyra followed him to the sitting room. Elaine had just made it up. She ran to Will, hysterical and shaking as if something truly horrible had happened, but Will didn’t seem shaken. He was steady and sad. He folded her into his embrace and reassured her, and Elaine’s words didn’t make any sense, and then Lyra realized with a sinking feeling of dread that _this_ was what Will had dealt with his entire childhood. She had never seen it firsthand before; Elaine had only had one slipup during the five years they’d all been together, and it hadn’t been anything as bad as _this_. 

“They’re coming—they’re coming—I heard it on the radio—the only way to hide is to keep seventy-three trees from the main road—”

“Well, that’s good, then, because we’re hundreds of trees away from the main road,” Will interrupted firmly. He looked terribly exhausted. Lyra’s throat narrowed at the sight of his shadowed eyes. “Come on. We’ll go count them together. Seventy-three, you said?” 

“Yes. Yes. Seventy-three, Will,” Elaine repeated. She seemed tearfully relieved that Will was taking her seriously. Lyra had to look away from her panicked, wild eyes. The foreign sight hurt her terribly. 

Will took his mum’s hand in his and led her towards the rope ladder.

“I’ll go down first, Mum, and then you follow, okay?” he said. Lyra knew he wanted to be on the ground to catch her in case she fell, though she didn’t seem physically ill, just mentally. 

“Okay,” Elaine agreed, her voice thin and frantic.

Will looked past his mum and met Lyra’s eyes. “I’ll be back. We’re going to count the trees. Kirjava—will you keep an eye out here?” 

Kirjava had been following Will anxiously, but she turned at once and circled back around to sit at Lyra’s ankles. Her fur tickled Lyra’s skin. 

“All right,” Lyra said softly. She looked from Will—exhausted, resolved—to Elaine—tormented, quivering—and felt her eyes begin to burn. “Is there anything that I can do?” 

Will nodded. “Start packing.”

He didn’t have to expound upon that. The only other time Elaine had begun slipping was when they’d tried to stay in Lyra’s world for a full year. She seemed particularly sensitive to the effects of another world, and they had been in Lyra’s this time for nearly eight months. They usually only stayed in each for half a year. This time, Will had been reluctant to pull Vera from school when she’d only just started it three months prior.

Lyra nodded to show Will that she understood. She couldn’t say she was wholly looking forward to switching worlds—there were a few things she liked better about Will’s world than hers, but the transition back and forth was tiring—but she knew it was time. She’d felt it was time for a while, actually, but this only proved it. 

She knew it would take Will a long time to traipse through the dark forest counting trees, but she didn’t want to go back to sleep alone in their empty bed. So she checked on Vera—she was still sleeping peacefully with pine marten Max curled at her neck like Pan curled at Lyra’s—and then she began the packing progress by shoving some of her and Will’s clothes into a large bag. She wasn’t really sure how much to bring because Will usually orchestrated the packing, so she decided to stop there and wait for Will to get back to pack any more. She reluctantly moved to her office. She’d banished her returned thesis to her desk before bed; it was still waiting for her, the envelope thick and intimidating. Lyra heaved a deep sigh. 

“I don’t want to,” she reminded Pan. It sounded quite whiny, but there was nobody there to hear it. 

“Me neither. But we have to,” Pan sighed back. 

“Why, though? I dunno why I even decided to pursue a doctorate, anyway,” she grumbled. 

“Yes you do.” 

She felt a painful surge of longing rise up within her. “Well, it’s not like I’ll ever get to do what I want with it, anyway,” she reminded Pan, her eyes burning for an awful, overwhelming moment. “I’ll never get back to Jordan. Ever. Not even to visit, much less work. And all this will have been for nothing. All Dame Hannah’s work to help me through this program when I’m so far away, all our work on this thesis, all the Master’s work convincing Jordan administration and scholars that the time has come to integrate female Scholars into Jordan College. All of it was for nothing.”

Pantalaimon brushed between her ankles. Lyra looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath, trying to master the urge to cry. She blamed her emotional outburst on being woken in the middle of the night, even though, at the back of her mind, she knew she’d been wanting to cry about this for weeks. She didn’t dare do so in front of Will or Vera, though. 

“That’s not true. We don’t know that—”

“We do know that! ‘Cause I asked my alethiometer if the Church would _ever_ leave us alone and it said—”

“That only meant that it wouldn’t ever leave us alone of its own volition!” Pan interrupted hotly. “You know that! You’re just whining and wallowing and—”

“I’m not wallowing! I’m frustrated! ‘Cause I don’t know why I did all this work—and I’ve got to do more still—and probably it was for nothing—and I _want to go home_!” 

She hadn’t planned on saying the last thing: it had burst from her. She automatically set her hand over her mouth because it was the one thing she’d never let herself say for years and years, but thankfully, there was nobody here to hear it but herself. And, of course, after voicing such a painful thought for the first time, the tears followed it. She sank down into her desk chair and set her face in her hands. Pantalaimon’s claws were sharp against her thighs as he scurried up to rest in her lap. 

“I do, too,” he said needlessly. Of course he did. He was her—she was him—and the both of them longed for home. 

If anybody else had been there to hear it, she would’ve had to defend her words. She would’ve had to spend at least ten minutes clarifying her words. _This is my home, too_ , she would’ve said, _but Jordan is my_ real _home, it’s where I feel safest, it’s where I feel most like_ me _, and I love being here with my family, but I want my family to be_ there _with me. I want to show Vera Jordan, I want to climb up on the roofs with her, I want to show her all the things that were so wondrous to me…I want her to be_ safe _…and Jordan is the only place that ever felt safe. I’m tired of running back and forth, I’m tired of hiding and looking over my shoulder at anyone who looks too hard at me or Vera, I’m tired._

But it was Pan. And she didn’t have to say any of that because he already knew. 

“It makes me sad, Pan,” she admitted, her words soft and damp with tears. “Working on my thesis. It makes me sad. Because I only ever did it because part of me hoped that we’d get to go home…that I could teach at Jordan, that Vera could run about freely and safely like I did, that Malcolm could go back to the job he loves, that we could live in our Oxford and then in Will’s Oxford. But I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. The only way it ever could happen would be if the Church was destroyed, but nobody is ever going to do that. The only people brave enough are me and Will, but I don’t feel that brave now that I’m a mum. I never worried so much before I had her, never, and now I feel like all I do is worry. I feel a bit like a coward. _I_ should be out there taking the Church down, I should, but I’m… _here_. I’m hiding. And it’s because I love her so much, and never did I ever think that loving my child could be weak, but…” she trailed off. The thought she’d had next alarmed her enough that she almost didn’t voice it, but it was only Pan, after all. “Maybe _that’s_ what Mrs. Coulter thought, too. Maybe that’s why she got rid of me before I could make her weak like that. She had things she needed to do, didn’t she? Awful things, yeah, but _things_ , things she thought were important, things _she_ had to do. I feel that way, too. I feel like I have things I’ve got to do. But…I’ve got Vera.” 

She stopped. Since when had loving Vera ever been an obstacle? She had felt from the first moment she held her that her arms were the only place Vera truly belonged. She had been sickened by the mere idea of being separated from her. And now?

“We can’t protect her fully as long as we’re protecting her,” Pantalaimon voiced. Succinct, precisely to the point Lyra was struggling emotionally to make. 

“Yeah,” she said. She sniffed and wiped her tears on her dressing gown sleeves. “All I can do is run back and forth and back and forth with her because I can’t risk them finding us, finding her. But until I do something about them, we’ll always have to run, and she’ll never be safe.”

“And as long as we’re running, we’ll never be able to give her the life that we really wanted to give her. And neither will Will,” Pantalaimon added. 

Lyra felt there was no good solution. She had tried asking her alethiometer what they should do, but the answer was indecipherable. 

“We should just trust that everything will work out in the end,” Pan decided. “You need to finish your thesis so that _when_ we get back home, you’ll be able to work at Jordan. And if things never get better and we never get back…well, you’ll still be a doctor, and you can make everybody call you Dr. Silvertongue, and that’s fun.”

Lyra sighed. “I suppose so. Or when Will and I get married…oh, well, actually…I just realized when we do we’ll both be Dr. Parry.”

“We could keep Silvertongue,” Pan suggested. 

Lyra nodded. “I guess we could technically, only I can’t be Silvertongue ever again in our world, and I’m used to answering to Parry now; I’ve been pretending to be Mrs. Parry for five years, and I guess I really _am_ Mrs. Parry even if I’m not, you know? I sort of like it, anyway. Us three being Parrys.” Another thought occurred to her. “You know, I could’ve had Mary and Malcolm forge a doctorate degree for me since they’ve forged everything else.”

Will’s medical license in her world was forged, her master’s in Will’s was forged, her birth certificate and identification in Will’s world was forged, Vera’s identification in both worlds was forged…but she guessed she hadn’t wanted to be called _Dr. Silvertongue_ unless she actually deserved it. She didn’t feel bad about Mary and Malcolm forging her Master’s in Will’s world because she actually _had_ done the work and been awarded the degree, just in her own world. It would be different to get a degree given to her she hadn’t actually done the work for. 

“That’d be wrong,” Pan said. 

“I know. I wouldn’t do it. Still…” she pulled her thesis over to her with a heavy sigh. “I _am_ sick of looking at this.”

“Me too.”

Despite that, it was a welcomed relief from the anxious thoughts she and Pan had been sharing prior. She sank into the work easily, and before she knew it, the soft pink light of sunrise was glowing over the wooden floorboards. She stretched her arms over her head and winced as her tense back muscles pulled. 

“Will and Elaine must be done by now…I bet he’s making breakfast.” 

“Probably,” Pan agreed, and Lyra’s stomach growled in anticipation. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was ‘til that moment. “I’ll go down to check while you check on Vera and Max.”

Lyra and Pantalaimon scampered off in their opposite directions. Lyra wasn’t too surprised to find Vera quietly playing on her bedroom carpet; she usually woke with the sun. She looked up from her science kit when the door opened and hopped up happily. 

“Mummy!” she said, her face brightening with a beam. Lyra met her halfway and lifted her into a hug. Max fluttered excitedly around them as a chipper songbird. “I didn’t have any nightmares! None!” 

Lyra kissed her on her cheek and hugged her tighter. “Good. We scared them off, I expect.”

“Yes we _did_!” Vera said definitively. She nuzzled her cheek against Lyra’s shoulder and held her tightly. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Cooking, I believe.”

“You were working on your Fesis, weren’t you?”

Lyra bit back a smile. She gently brushed her fingers through Vera’s dark, tangled hair. The soft waves had knotted together during the night. “My thesis, yes.”

Vera nodded. “I wasn’t worried ‘cause I thought so.”

“Sorry I wasn’t in my room when you woke. I lost track of time,” Lyra explained. She shifted Vera so she was propped on her hip. “I’m glad you weren’t worried. Shall we go check in on Daddy?”

“Yes, I want fruit salad with just pineapple, bananas, and mangoes, ‘cause today I’m eating yellow and orange and that’s it.”

“We’ll see what he’s made,” Lyra hedged. Vera’s latest color-based dietary kick wasn’t well-tolerated by Will, nor was her recent obsession with wearing the same pair of dungarees over and over again. Lyra didn’t care much what she ate or wore—she even tolerated trousers though she still refused to wear them herself—and was just relieved she’d stopped sneaking out of their house in the middle of the night. As far as she was concerned, Vera could eat mangoes for every meal and wear dungarees for a year straight if it meant she was safe. 

Much to Vera’s deep, tragic disappointment, Will had _not_ followed her plan for a strictly yellow-and-orange breakfast. She stared in dismay at her spinach omelet. 

“ _Noooooooooooo—_ Nana!!” 

Her tantrum was short-circuited the moment she spotted Elaine standing near the kitchen window. She forgot her protest and ran happily over to her grandmother. She threw her arms around Elaine’s legs from behind, hugging tightly and chanting _yay, yay, yay!_ , but Elaine didn’t respond. Will jumped as if he’d been burned and hurried over to pry Vera from his mum, but Vera had noticed something was wrong already. 

“Nana!” she repeated brightly. She turned in Will’s arms and fought to get down. “Nana, I missed you and—Nana! Nana!” 

Will carried Vera over to the worktop and set her beside the hob, but she was still watching Elaine. Her excitement had turned into confusion. 

“Nana, are you mad at me?” she asked, confused, hurt. She looked up at Will, puzzled. “Did I do a bad thing?”

Lyra’s heart ached at that, but it was clearly nothing compared to the agony Will was feeling. Lyra saw the intense emotions play out across his face and she automatically walked over to stand near him. She set a hand on his arm as he answered Vera. 

“No, Vera, Nana’s just a bit ill. Her medicine’s not right anymore, and she needs to get back to my world so we can get her to a doctor. Preferably her doctor.” 

Her doctor? Her Oxford doctor? They hadn’t left Africa once since Vera was born. Lyra looked at the profile of Will’s face and frowned. 

Vera’s confusion eased, but not her pain. She looked anxiously at Will. “I knew that already, Daddy,” she told him. 

Lyra thought she was being a bit cheeky and gave her an exasperated look, but she noted Vera’s serious, concerned look, and she realized she wasn’t being cheeky at all.

“What?” Will questioned. 

“I knew she was sick and had to go back.”

“But how did you know that?” 

“I knew it. I dunno. I thought you said it before, but you didn’t say that, but now you are.”

Lyra remembered the first time Vera had snuck out. She’d been going to visit Elaine, insistent that Elaine was sick and had to go back to their world immediately. She’d sworn Lyra and Will had said it, but they hadn’t said anything like that at all. 

Will was on the same wavelength. “When you snuck out the first time? When you were going to bring Nana her bracelet?” 

Vera nodded gravely. “She’s sick and she has to go back. I knew it, but I knew it too early.”

Will glanced down at Lyra. His expression was one of alarm and unease. Lyra’s probably matched it. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Vera asked. 

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” Will assured her. He sounded distracted. “She just won’t act like herself sometimes.”

From her seat on the worktop surface, Vera reached up and touched Will’s cheek gently. He looked down and met her eyes. 

“Daddy,” she said gravely, “it’s a yellow and orange day. I woke up and I knew. So I can’t eat that green thing.”

She was completely unconcerned with the baffling statement she’d made about possibly seeing the future three months in advance, but Will and Lyra weren’t. While Vera jumped down from the worktop to go stake the ice box out for something of acceptable coloring, Will and Lyra looked at each other. 

“What—?”

“Is this _banana_ yogurt?!” Vera exclaimed excitedly. 

“I think so,” Will said. “Just have that, then.”

He was more distracted than Lyra thought. He _never_ gave into Vera’s picky eating. Vera was as surprised as Lyra was. Her head whipped around. She looked at Will with wide, blue eyes. 

“Are you teasing with me?” she asked skeptically. 

“No. Have it. Go on,” he said, his eyes still on Lyra’s. 

Vera was suspicious. “Did you hide proting powder in here?” 

“No,” Will said, and usually he would’ve told Vera that yogurt was a protein all on its own, but he didn’t. “It’s just normal.”

“Okay…”

Vera took the yogurt, Max—a seagull—swooped down and took a spoon from a canister on the worktop, and the two went to sit quietly at the table beside the window Elaine was still gazing out of. Will and Lyra backed up so that they were in the doorway and out of earshot of Vera but could still keep an eye on her. 

“That’s eerie, Will,” Lyra whispered. “What does she mean she already knew? She guessed it or…?”

“I don’t know. And that’s what bothers me. I’m going to ask her more about it after breakfast,” he whispered. 

“Your mum?” 

“Bad. We counted the trees, and then we had to count the stars to make sure we were headed back in the right direction, and then she got frightened of something and tried to take off running into the dark forest—I had to pick her up—it was horrible.” His voice broke. 

Lyra reached up and held his face in her hands. She peered into his dark eyes and swept her thumbs over his cheeks. His forehead was wrinkled from stress; his brow was low and heavy over his eyes. She longed to kiss the tension away. 

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You told me over and over that we were staying too long here. I just didn’t want to mess up Vera’s routine.”

“You think she needs to go back to your Oxford?” 

“Yeah. Her medicine’s not working anymore, and I don’t know much at all about psychiatric medicine. Her doctor in Oxford—he’s the only one who ever helped her. I figure Mary can take her back.”

Lyra frowned. “Will they come back to us?” 

“I dunno. I hope so,” he said. 

It made her feel uncertain and worried. She and Will hadn’t been without Elaine or Mary since Vera was born. _Vera_ had never gone more than a day without seeing them. What if they all got separated forever? It was a horrifying thought. 

“Daddy,” Vera whined, drawing their attention back to her. She was peering unhappily into her yogurt dish. “I’m still hungry.”

“Well I’ve got some lovely omelet over here that you can have,” Will told her. He walked back over to the stove to begin dishing out their breakfast. “You can eat around the green parts. Egg is yellow.”

Vera considered that. “Egg _is_ yellow…okay.”

They sat down at the table to eat. Will tried to get Elaine to join them, but she just kept mumbling something about ‘keeping watch’, and Will didn’t push her. Lyra ate slowly, her mind preoccupied with a hundred different things, while Vera chatted at her and Will. 

“Don’t you think? Mummy?” 

Lyra jerked from her thoughts. “What?” 

Vera furrowed her brow unhappily. “You weren’t even listening!” 

“I was! I just…” she looked at Will. 

“Vera was just telling us about how much she wants to go to the cinema once we’re back in my world,” Will provided. 

“Oh! Yes, me too, Vera. We can go first thing,” Lyra promised. She eyed Vera’s plate. She’d picked every bit of wilted spinach from her omelet and piled it to the side of her plate. “I see you’ve deconstructed your omelet.”

“She’s _saving_ her spinach,” Will explained to Lyra, an undercurrent of amusement audible in his tone. “Tomorrow’s a green day.” 

“Ah,” Lyra said, nodding seriously. 

“Waste not, want not,” Vera told them wisely. “That’s what my nana says.”

Lyra was just glad she was quoting Elaine. Last week at school she’d let a particularly colorful exclamation leave her lips after stubbing her toe, and she’d followed _that_ up with “that’s what Mal says.” Lyra and Will hadn’t gotten onto her too severely for that; with all the secrets Vera had to keep, they didn’t feel they had much room to make her censor her speech in any other way on top of it. 

“What are you thinking about so much?” Vera wondered. 

Lyra wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Loads of stuff. What do you think I’m thinking about?”

“Maybe…Daddy.”

Will snorted into his coffee. Lyra laughed. “You think so?”

“Or your fe—I mean _thesis_.”

“Both of those are good bets, Ver.”

She never would have corrected her to say _Oxford._ She never would’ve said that she’d been thinking so hard about ways their family could go back, too.

* * *

“What if _we_ took Elaine back?” 

Will looked at her, his eyebrows raised. He measured her expression. She stared back steadily. 

“Us? Go to Oxford?”

Lyra turned back towards the sea. She squinted against the sun and watched Vera’s dark head bob up and down as she jumped over waves. Gloria was only a few feet away sitting in the water near the shore. Once Lyra was certain both girls were still safe, she glanced back at Will. 

“Yeah. In your world of course, not mine.”

He shook his head. “Lyra, we can’t. You and Vera don’t have _real_ documentation. I don’t think the forged passports are good enough to get you through passport control.”

It was the same reason that’d been holding them back for years. Lyra was sick of hearing it. “But what if they are good enough? They look just like yours.”

“To you they do. My world has all sorts of ways to check if passports are fake. And trust me, you don’t want to be caught sneaking into a country with a fake passport. We also can’t prove that Vera is ours—we don’t have any proper documentation on her, just more forgeries—and we can’t risk somebody taking her from us.”

“We can prove she’s ours because she’s got our blood!”

“Do you know how long it’d take to get a blood test ordered? Meanwhile, she could get taken and separated from us. We can’t, Lyra. We really can’t. I want to…you know I do. But we _can’t_.”

The gravity in his voice convinced her, but that didn’t stop her from feeling disappointed and frustrated. 

“Vera was right. I wish we still had your knife,” she said quietly. She glanced over at him. “You’ve still got the pieces. You keep them in that holder. I saw it.”

He was uneasy. “I do, but that wasn’t for me to rebuild it. That was to keep them safe. It couldn’t be reforged again.”

“Even if it couldn’t be remade, it could be _studied_ …”

“It’s a horrible idea. I can’t believe you’d even suggest it. You know what sort of horrid things the knife unleashed—”

“MUMMY! DADDY!”

“MR. PARRY! MRS. PARRY!"

They turned quickly and looked at Vera and Gloria as they came sprinting across the sand towards them. Then fell down onto their sandy knees and proudly held up a beautiful conch shell. 

“Wow!” Lyra said. “That’s beautiful!”

“We found it!” Gloria said happily. 

“It’s marvelous,” Will praised. “I bet there are more, too.”

Gloria and Vera exchanged an excited look, and with that, they were running back towards the sea. Once they’d regained their privacy, Lyra spun to face Will. 

“What if there was a way to immediately kill every Specter the knife made? We know it’s possible to kill them since the angels took care of all of them at the end of the war, right? Well, what if we were trained, and we always killed them as soon as they were made?”

“It still doesn’t stop Dust from leaking out. That’s what kept us apart to begin with.”

“Okay, yeah, but you’re forgetting my research in my world, Will,” she reminded him. She was getting excited now. She moved to sit on her knees and peered imploringly at Will. “We found a way to block Dust from escaping. It wouldn’t take too much more experimentation to make it into something compact that we could take with us…a veil or something like that…and then when we open a door, we could kill the Specter, drape the veil over the door, and there would be no Dust leaking out and no awful creature on top of it.” She was letting her heart get ahead of her mind. “Then we could go wherever we pleased! Oxford in your world…Oxford in _my_ world…we would be protected at Jordan, and if we got word that the Church knew we were there, it’d be so easy to run: we’d just cut right through to somewhere else! And Will, we could get married in the Library Gardens, and we could visit Svalbard again—” oh, she felt such a deep wave of longing for Iorek and Aobel; she hadn’t seen them in five years now—“we could do so many things and Vera would be safer than she is now…and happier, too!”

He looked at her, serious and subdued, and Lyra realized maybe she shouldn’t have sounded so wistful. 

“It’d be wonderful,” he finally said, his voice weighted. “But it’s impossible.”

There that was again—impossible. Since when was anything _impossible_ for them? She guessed things became impossible as soon as they had a child (as soon as their hearts began to walk outside of their bodies—and that was what having a child felt like.) The thought of putting Vera at risk _was_ impossible to shoulder.

But it was like she and Pan had decided: no matter what they did, Vera was at risk. There was really no way at all to make her safe. But _this_ …getting the knife again somehow…that would get her as close to safety as possible. 

“Think about it,” she begged Will quietly. She scooted over so that they were sitting side-by-side, her arm against his arm, her hip pressed against his hip. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Just think about it, okay?”

He didn’t respond, but she knew he’d be thinking about it regardless. 

* * *

 

Gloria was having a conversation with an imaginary being over dinner. 

“And thank you for these potatoes…and thank you for this…” Gloria paused her prayer and looked up at Will quizzically. “What’s this purple stuff?” 

“Cabbage.” 

She closed her eyes again. “Thank you for this cabbage…thank you for my friend…thank you for not making it rain today…thank you for my new shoes…amen.” 

Gloria began eating at once. Vera had already begun to throw a tantrum over the purple on her plate when it wasn’t a ‘purple day’, but when she saw Gloria eating without complaint, she followed her example. Lyra never thought she’d ever be so happy to see her daughter being a follower. 

Will—for his part—was silent and stoic. It wasn’t a good sign. Lyra knew better than to push him in front of Vera or Gloria so she gave him space and ate quietly, entertaining Gloria and Vera’s conversation as they ate, trying her hardest to keep her own worry and fear at bay. When it was time to take Gloria home, she and Will walked in silence along the path, the two girls chatting a few feet ahead of them, and Lyra still didn’t push. Kirjava was being standoffish with Pan, too, and that was worrying as well. 

They’d arranged to meet Father Cain at the bench in front of the library. Lyra refused to step foot in a church and they didn’t want Father Cain knowing where they lived, so it worked well for both parties. He was already there when they arrived, though he was sitting silently with prayer beads in his hand, his eyes shut with concentration. His sheep dæmon was just as lifeless as always; Lyra felt a chill of foreboding when she locked eyes with it briefly. She didn’t much like it, either, but just like her daughter, she couldn’t really articulate why. 

“There he is!” Gloria said happily. She pointed at her caretaker. “He’s praying.”

Vera was looking at Father Cain with an odd intensity, but Lyra didn’t have time to question it. Will walked Gloria over, exchanged a few clipped niceties with Father Cain, and then grabbed Vera’s hand and steered them back down the path home. 

“Are you angry, Daddy?” Vera asked. 

“No, I’m not angry. Did you have fun today?” 

“Yes. I think you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry. What did you and Gloria play at the beach?”

“Lots. How come you’re walking so fast, then?” 

Lyra bit back a smile. Vera knew her dad well. Will slowed deliberately. “You’ll have to do something very fun with Gloria next time you see her. It’ll be a while ‘til you see her again.”

Vera frowned. There was a long pause. “Oh yeah. ‘Cause we’re leaving. And we’re going _all the way_ across the ocean for days and days, and then we’re going all the way to the door for hours and hours in a truck, and then we’re going through the door and then we’re riding a bus for _days_ and then we’re home and then we’ve got to do it all over again. Great.”

Vera heaved a heavy, sarcastic sigh. Lyra was so taken aback by Vera’s first genuine sarcasm that she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not. Will’s mood thawed long enough for him to look at Lyra with his eyebrows raised. His lips twitched a bit. Lyra’s did, too. She looked away to keep from laughing. 

“Does that frustrate you?” Will asked. 

“Yes.”

At least she was honest about that. “I’m sorry, Vera. It’s just the way things are. It’ll get easier.” 

Lyra didn’t think it would, though. She thought it was probably only going to get harder now that Vera was making her own connections in each world. 

“I’ll miss my friend, though,” she said sadly. Lyra’s heart ached for her. She sped up and took Vera’s little hand in hers. She gave her thin fingers a squeeze.

“You’ll have to do something extra fun with her, then,” Lyra reminded her gently. “What should you do?”

“Hmmm…” Vera said. And she thought for quite a long while. It wasn’t until they were back home that she finally gave them an answer. “I think we should go to church.”

Lyra groaned. “Ver, we’ve talked and talked and _talked_ about this—”

“No church,” said Will firmly, and something in his tone made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in arguing about it. Vera clearly saw that, but she persisted anyway. 

“But it’s okay, Daddy, because Mummy prays, too.”

Of all the things she could have said, that shocked Lyra the most. She spun around to face Vera. “What? What are you talking about? I don’t _pray_.” Her expression twisted with disgust. 

Vera nodded earnestly. “You do. Yes, you do, Mummy. You look _just like_ Father Cain when he’s looking at his prayer beads when you’ve got your alethiometer—you do! He prays with his necklaces and you pray with your alethiometer.” 

“I—” but then Lyra stopped because she wasn’t sure how to argue back. “I’m not praying though, I’m…” what? “Reading it. Getting answers.”

“He’s getting answers! So we’re even Church people, too, so I can go with my friend.” 

“No, you absolutely _cannot_ ,” Will repeated. His voice was calm, but Lyra could tell he was set on his answer. “You’ll have to find something else to do with her, or you won’t do anything at all, and that’s that.”

Vera heaved a disappointed sigh. Max morphed from a koala to a tarantula. “ _Fine_.” 

Her attitude had taken Lyra off guard again. Where had her sweet daughter gone? She watched Vera climb up the rope ladder with a baffled expression. 

“She’s in a mood,” she commented to Will. 

“Do you blame her?” he asked, and with that, he began climbing up after her. 

Lyra and Pan exchanged an identical look. 

* * *

Lyra had half-expected bedtime to contain another tantrum. She’d expected Vera to throw herself on the floor and scream ‘ _I don’t want to go, I don’t want to!’_. But Vera’s earlier surliness had seemed to be enough venting for her. She sat patiently and happily while Will combed her hair, she snuggled up to Lyra and rested her ear over Lyra’s heart as Lyra read, and she kissed both parents goodnight after an hour of reading. 

They said goodnight; Vera called them back in for water; they said goodnight again; Vera called them in to check her window; they said goodnight again; Vera called them _back_ to check beneath her bed…finally, Will and Lyra’s dæmons offered to stay in the room until Vera fell asleep to make her feel better. 

“What are you frightened of?” Lyra asked her softly. Pantalaimon curled up on the pillow next to Vera’s while Kirjava snuggled in the blankets at the foot of the bed. Lyra and Will were sitting on either side of Vera. 

“Nightmares,” Vera answered at once. 

“But we scared them away, remember?” Lyra reminded her. 

Vera didn’t look soothed. She curled closer to Will. 

“You’ll be okay with Pan and Kirjava in here,” he told her gently. 

“Yeah,” Lyra agreed, “Kirjava always makes me feel better.” 

“ _Thanks_ ,” Pan muttered underneath his breath. Lyra gave him a dry look. 

Vera perked up a bit. “Yeah, I like when Pan and Kirjava are in here. Kirjava makes you feel better when you’re sad, Mummy, like when you were ‘bout to cry and she crawled into your lap and she was purring—I didn’t know dæmons could do that to people who aren’t their people, but then that happened, and I saw that book at the library where the lady and the man were—”

“When did you see that?” Lyra interrupted, confused. She knew for a _fact_ that Kirjava had never touched her in front of Vera. Ever. And Pan had never touched Will. “What are you talking about?” 

She was racking her brain, trying to remember when Vera might’ve seen Kirjava in her lap without Lyra realizing she was seeing it, but she couldn’t think of any time they would’ve allowed that to happen. Will was equally baffled. 

“You saw that happen, Vera?” he asked, confused. 

Vera nodded. “Yes. Mummy was upset ‘cause she was going to have a baby, but she found out right before we had to go back to your world, Daddy, and that makes the baby die, and it hurts when it happens, too, and so Mummy was scared and sad, and Kirjava said—”

Lyra’s hair was standing on end. She shivered. She scooted back enough to turn to face her daughter completely. She stared gravely at her in the dim light. “When did you see all of this, Vera?” 

She didn’t understand. The one time she’d had a miscarriage, she hadn’t even known she was pregnant; she’d switched worlds when she was only a few weeks in, causing her body to end the pregnancy, and that had been that. She had never talked about being pregnant beforehand because she hadn’t _known_ she was pregnant beforehand. So Vera _couldn’t_ have heard this. But how could she make this up? They’d never told her anything about their family planning or conception struggles. Lyra knew they’d never talked about it where she could hear them, either, because they had been extremely careful about that, too. 

“I saw it when it happened,” Vera said matter-of-factly. She frowned. She looked down at her lap quizzically. “But maybe it’s a later one and not a now one.”

“A…what?” Will pressed urgently. 

“A later one. Sometimes when I remember stuff, it’s for later, not for now.”

“You mean you’re imagining things. Thinking about them?” Lyra tried. But she still felt extremely shaken. Somehow, she knew that wasn’t it. 

“No, not like that. I think about things that happened, but later. Like Nana going back to Daddy’s world. I thought it was a now one, but it was a later one. She didn’t have to go ‘til now, and I thought she had to go right then when I saw you say it, but you were really going to say it way later, and it was different when you did.”

Will looked as lost as Lyra. “And you saw this happening? You saw Mummy saying that about a baby, you saw Kirjava getting in her lap?” 

Vera nodded. She slid over to lean against Lyra’s side. She rested her head against Lyra’s arm sweetly. “I’m sorry, Mummy. That’s sad.”

“I—” Lyra didn’t know what to say. She wrapped a numb arm around her daughter and stared urgently at Will. 

“When you saw this…what time of the year was it?”

Vera shrugged. “I dunno. It happened here. But then we had to go to your world, Daddy.”

“Ah, I see,” Will said lightly. “So we were in this house when it happened?”

“Mmhmm,” Vera said. “But then we had to go to your world, and that’s bad. And then the angel wouldn’t let us one time, ‘cause you didn’t listen, Daddy. He said ‘no, no, go home’, ‘cause you lied and lied to him.” Vera yawned deeply. She slid down to curl against Lyra’s hip. Lyra was too panicked to slide down to hold her. “You had to fix it,” she said sleepily. 

If Will wasn’t panicked before, he was now. “What? Vera, what do you mean? The angel did _what_?”

“He…you know, Daddy, you were there.” She yawned again. 

“But I wasn’t, Vera. That hasn’t happened. When are you seeing these things? When you’re sleeping?”

“Sometimes…mostly when I’m about to fall asleep and I’m thinking about loads of stuff…” her voice was slurred with exhaustion now. She’d fall asleep any moment. 

Something horrible occurred to Lyra. “Vera, your nightmares…are those ‘later-ones’? Are you remembering later memories?” 

She tried to use Vera’s terminology even if it made little sense to her, but it did her no good: Vera was asleep. She and Will tiptoed from Vera’s room, and as soon as they were on the covered bridge between hers and theirs, Lyra stopped and looked at Will, alarmed. She could tell he had forgotten about their earlier discussion in light of this. 

“So she’s…dreaming, or…” 

“How could she come up with the things she’s coming up with if she’s dreaming?” Will pointed out, his voice lowered to a whisper. “How could she know about pregnancies not carrying over into another world? Or the angel…the _angel_ , Lyra…” he reached up and buried his hands in his hair, his every line tense with stress. “How could she know about that…she even said I _lied_ to him…I did, Lyra, I did—what does she mean he’s not going to let us through?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t know any more about this than you do. When she was talking about ‘later ones’ or ‘now ones’ it sounded as if that has happened all her life, like maybe she think it’s normal…”

“The thing with my mum…it was almost like she had the memory _before_ it happened.”

Lyra was frightened. She didn’t want to believe that Vera could do anything more than any other child could, but she was starting to remember things she’d written off as childhood silliness. Like the few times during Vera’s lessons when they were teaching Vera to read and she’d insist, over and over, that they’d already taught her something before when they knew they hadn’t. If she could somehow see things before that happened, what did that mean? 

“I don’t like this,” she told Will. 

“I don’t understand,” he agreed, frustrated, worried. “You need to ask your alethiometer.” 

Lyra was wary. “I can try. It doesn’t like me asking about her, though. You know that.”

They had been standing still on the bridge, but Lyra began walking back to their bedroom. Will followed. She was preoccupied and worried as she readied for bed. When they were together under the covers, she said: “I’m worried that she’s right, that she is somehow seeing things that happen in the future, and I don’t _want_ …” she trailed off because her voice was getting thick and she didn’t want to cry. She just knew she never wanted to go through what she’d gone through the last time she was pregnant ever again. It had been painful in every way something could be, and having to know _before_ she switched worlds…having to make that decision to either abandon her family for nearly a full year or sabotage a wanted pregnancy…she didn’t want that. Not at all. “I don’t know how it happens, either, if she’s telling the truth, ‘cause I _never_ forget to take my tablets, but maybe something happens and I do.” 

Will was just as worried as she was. “I don’t know. The pill isn’t _perfect_ , but it’s close to it. Maybe you do. We’ll just have to be even more cautious. At least we can prevent that.”

“What if we _can’t_ prevent it? I mean, if that’s the _future_ …” A horrible thought came to her. She sat up, panicked. “What if I already am?! What if this is something that’s going to happen _soon_?” 

He appeared more shaken at that idea. “No. I don’t think so—”

“But we don’t know, do we? Do you have any of those…those wee sticks?” 

“Maybe one or two somewhere. I’ll have to look.” He peered at her carefully. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?” 

She scowled. “Yes. And you should be, too!”

He frowned. “I am, Lyra. You _know_ I am. I’m just trying to make sense of all this. If she’s just lying or making things up, there’s no point working ourselves into a panic.”

“You said it yourself! How could she possibly come up with all this on her own?!” 

“Maybe she’s a better eavesdropper than we give her credit for.”

Lyra hadn’t considered that. “Maybe.” She didn’t think it was that simple, though. “Can you look for those sticks? There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep ‘til I know.”

He sat up and swung his legs from the bed. “Yes.”

He scrounged one up, Lyra locked herself in the small bathroom, and when she finally emerged, she was teary—with relief. 

“No,” she said, and then she showed him the stick. He relaxed, too. 

“Good. So we take every precaution to make sure it stays that way. Your alethiometer?” 

“Fine, okay,” she agreed. He’d helped get her the answers she needed, so she would do the same for him, though she didn’t think her alethiometer was going to cooperate with her. She crawled back under the covers, pulled her alethiometer over to herself, and made sure the stick was right. Her alethiometer told her it was, and that reassured her enough to take a deep breath and press on. She didn’t have any issues framing the questions she asked it, but its responses weren’t quite so simple. She struggled through the translation for nearly a half hour before she groaned and climbed from the bed. 

“What?” Will asked drowsily. 

“Need my books,” she muttered. 

She knew the task was important when Will didn’t nag her on the importance of a good night’s rest. Instead, he reached a hand out and set it briefly on her knee. 

“Do you want company?” he offered. 

“No,” she said, “you can sleep. It’s going to be a long night.”

She was right—it was. She filled ten pages with messy notes and flipped quickly through her books for four hours before the answer to her first question made any sort of sense. She sat back, exhausted and satisfied, and studied the decoding as she rubbed her sore knuckles. 

“So she is. Seeing things before they happen,” she told Pantalaimon. “The only question now is _why_.”

“And _how_ ,” Pan added, his paws pressing urgently into the notes in front of them as he scanned his eyes over the cramping lines of text. 

Her further questions of _why_ and _how_ were more complex. The sun had risen from outside the window by the time she deciphered anything at all, but she still wasn’t content with the answer she’d come up with. 

“It doesn’t make much sense,” Lyra complained to Pan. She was exhausted and frustrated. “The alethiometer keeps referring to me and itself. I don’t know what it means.”

Pan didn’t know, either. “Let’s sleep on it,” he suggested. He yawned. “We’re not going to figure anything else out ‘til we’re rested.”

He was probably right. Lyra’s eyelids were so heavy they kept drifting closed of their own accord, and her head felt terribly weighted. Her heart, too, was bruised; she _hated_ what she’d found out so far, hated it so much she wished her alethiometer was wrong. As if Vera needed one more reason why she couldn’t be normal. As if she needed one more reason for the Church to seek her out. And she dreaded telling Will. 

When Lyra returned to bed, she saw that Vera had crept into their bed at some point during the night. Lyra sat tiredly on the edge and peered at her sleeping family, her heart thawing and warming and growing. In sleep, Will and Vera’s sleep-smoothed brows were nearly identical, and their dark hair was sticking up in the back in almost the same way from sleeping with it wet. Max was a smaller version of Kirjava, curled up with the real Kirjava at the top of the bed, and with them both so peaceful in sleep, it was hard to believe that anything was wrong. Lyra peered at her family—at her lover and their child—and found them faultless, and she couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that not everybody found them so. She looked at her little daughter in particular…how was it that she could be in danger? Part of Lyra believed that if the Church just _met_ her…if they just spoke to her and saw her smile…but then, if Vera was truly somehow peeking into the future, that was yet another thing that marked her as _different_. The Church would never look something like that over. It would have to be a secret from everybody but her and Will. 

Lyra was bone-deep exhausted. She lay on Will’s other side so she wouldn’t jostle Vera too much and scooted close until she could rest her forehead against his chest. Pantalaimon curled up against the back of her neck. Despite how confused and stressed she was, she slipped off in seconds. 

* * *

 

“What about this, Daddy? Can I take this?” 

Will looked up from Vera’s suitcase. She was gripping so many plush toys in her arms that she look liable to fall forwards. Will pressed his lips together and exchanged a quick look with Kirjava. 

“How about we pick five of them? Those toys live here, remember, and you’ll get to see your toys that live at our other house.”

Her brow pursed. “How about ten?” 

“Five.”

“Nine!”

“Five.”

“Four!”

“Sure,” Will allowed. “You can take four.”

It took her a second. She huffed, annoyed. “No! I mean…seven!” 

He finished folding one of her dresses and placed it nicely on top of the pile of folded clothes inside her suitcase. “Five.”

She groaned. “Can I ask Mummy?”

“No, you can’t ask Mummy. She’s busy.”

Vera flopped down on her bed beside her opened suitcase. She began shoving plushies into it. She rammed a stuffed elephant’s face into the recesses of the suitcase so hard that Will felt a bit bad for it. 

“Busy with her thesis?” Vera wondered. 

“With her alethiometer,” Will said. He gently took the elephant from her and wedged it in beside her piles of clothes. He grabbed her next toy—a stuffed camel—and helped fit that one, too. Max set his chin on the edge of the suitcase and peered at Will with curious eyes. 

“She’s been looking at her alethiometer all the time,” Max said. 

Will kept his expression neutral. “It’s her hobby. She likes it.” He didn’t say: _she’s trying to figure out what is going on with you and Vera—why you can see things that haven’t happened yet._ He and Lyra had decided not to broach the topic with Vera. As far as Will could tell, she thought seeing things ahead of time was perfectly normal, and he wasn’t going to be the one to make her feel different. And anyway, he and Lyra wouldn’t have any answers to give her yet, as Lyra hadn’t managed to decipher much more information from her alethiometer, so Will felt it was best to pretend like nothing out of the ordinary was happening until they understood it better. If they ever did. He _knew_ Lyra was trying with everything she had, but she hadn’t made it far in the week that’d passed since they’d first realized what was happening with Vera. He didn’t blame her at all, but he did feel frustrated sometimes just because he wanted to understand, and she was the only door to understanding that he had. 

And with his mother’s rapid deterioration, he felt rushed and anxious. They needed to get back to his world as soon as possible, but uprooting their lives again for half an entire year took time. They had to prepare their house for such a long vacancy, they had to pack up quite a lot of items, and they had to make transportation plans to get back to Namibia. It wasn’t easy. And with this recent troubling revelation about their daughter, it was doubly difficult to find time to get everything done what with his partner spending most her days trying to read the alethiometer.  The whole thing—switching worlds—was becoming extremely draining. Will understood the frustration and weariness that had led to Lyra’s suggestion about the subtle knife…but he was trying to remain sensible. He knew that knife should stay in pieces; somehow, he felt that putting it together again would be wrong and that it might not be anything like what it once was if they ever could. It felt dangerous. 

He’d been so deep in his thoughts as he folded and sorted Vera’s remaining clothing that he’d forgotten what they were talking about. So when Vera asked “Can _I_ have one?” he wasn’t sure what she was asking. 

“Have what?”

“An alethiometer like Mummy’s.”

“Oh. No, Ver. They only made a few and there are no more left.”

“Oh,” she said sadly. “I like it.”

She started shoving another animal—a sixth—into her bulging suitcase. Will gently pulled it away. 

“Only five, remember? This one makes six.”

“No, ‘cause these are both elephants.”

Will wasn’t following. “So?”

“So they’re the same thing so it’s not six different ones, it’s five ones.”

“No. There are _six_ stuffed toys. You only have room for five.”

“But if I turn him like this and move his trunk like _this_ I can make him fit right here—”

“Five,” Will repeated firmly. He had been persistently consistent with Vera ever since her behavior incident with the sneaking out and he wasn’t about to stop now. 

“Okay,” Vera said. “I think Mummy would let me take six, though.”

“You think so, do you?” asked Will, partially amused. 

Vera nodded solemnly. He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Well, if Mummy does your packing next time, she’ll be the one to make the toy decisions.”

Vera didn’t seem comforted by this. Will thought she was probably realizing that she’d rarely seen her mother fold a stitch of clothing her entire life, so the odds of her being the one to pack Vera’s suitcase next time weren’t very good.

* * *

 

Will’s lover—the woman he wanted to be his wife more than he wanted anything else—was crying. The sight made his heart lurch.

“What?” he asked at once. He let go of Vera’s hand and crossed the office with long, concerned strides. He set his hands on her thin shoulders briefly and then kneeled beside her seat so he could look up at her face. She wiped shakily at her cheeks. 

“I just—I can’t, Will,” she admitted, vulnerable and beaten down, and Will felt a mixture of pain on her behalf and disappointment. He wanted to encourage her, to tell her that yes, she could, but that felt selfish. He could tell she needed comforting more than she needed cheerleading. So he pulled her up so he could sit in her seat and pull her down into his lap—so she was entirely wrapped up in his embrace—and he kissed her collarbone and her jaw, and he didn’t say a word. Thankfully, Vera was comfortable with giving pep talks. She hurried over to her mother and began patting her back at once in what was probably meant to be a comforting gesture, but it was a bit harder, like maybe she was trying to dislodge something from her mum’s throat. 

“It’s okay, Mummy,” she said, beating away at Lyra’s spine. She knocked the breath from Lyra—Will heard her exhale weakly—and didn’t seem to notice it. Will quickly reached out and caught Vera’s hand in his. 

“Pat gently, Vera, she’s not choking,” he guided. He set his own hand on Lyra’s back and demonstrating the correct force to use to pat somebody lovingly. She watched him intently, studied his movement, and then nodded. When she began patting Lyra’s back a second time, it was more a stroke than a pat, but at least she wasn’t beating her mum. 

“You _can_ do it,” Vera continued. Her voice was bursting with confidence. “The only things you can’t do are these: one, the things you don’t. Two, sneak out of the house. Three, tell Big Secrets.”

This time, Will couldn’t help but laugh. He was certain Vera was just parroting back a mixture of all the lectures she’d ever been given, but it was endearing and amusing to him. He could tell Lyra felt the same because she laughed weakly against his neck. 

“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” she muttered. 

Vera continued stroking her back. “I love my mummy.”

Will’s heart doubled in size. He was smiling softly at their sweet child as Lyra replied: “I love my Vera. You always make me feel better.”

“I’m good at being a good friend. That’s why I have so many.”

“Ah,” Lyra sniffed. “I see.”

“So you can do it, Mummy, ‘cause you always do.”

“Do you know what I’m trying to do?” Lyra asked. Vera sounded so confident that Will wondered if she’d somehow seen something in the future to give her the full context to Lyra’s breakdown. 

“Probably your thesis or your alethiometer,” Vera said. “‘Cause you’re _always_ in here doing all that. Why don’t you ever pack my suitcase?”

Lyra glanced over at Vera and smiled. “Oh, you don’t want me to pack your suitcase. I would do a dreadful job.”

“No, I think you’d do a great job,” Vera said. 

Will set his hand atop Vera’s head and rolled his eyes affectionately towards Lyra. “She just wants you to be the one making the calls on what goes in the suitcase. She thinks you’d let her bring more toys.”

“Probably would,” agreed Lyra. Vera beamed. “Come sit with me and maybe if we put our brains together we can come up with something. Yeah?”

“Yeah!!” Vera exclaimed. She was so flattered that Lyra thought she could help her with the _alethiometer_ that she was grinning ear to ear. Will moved from the chair and pulled another up to sit beside them as Vera climbed at once into Lyra’s lap. He was content to sit with them and keep them company as Lyra explained symbol after symbol to their attentive child. Vera didn’t really have much insight into the parts that were stumping Lyra, but Will knew Lyra never thought she would: she’d just wanted to make her happy, and sitting with her mum and feeling important always made Vera happy. 

* * *

For Vera’s last hurrah with her friend Gloria, they’d decided to let her bring her over after school. It would be the first time Gloria was ever invited up into the treehouse; all the other times Vera and Gloria had played, they’d played beneath it or they’d gone elsewhere (the library, the beach, the park.) That Friday of the playdate was also Vera’s last day of school before the move; it would be a long, emotional day for Vera, so Will made sure she got to bed earlier than usual on Thursday. She fought the earlier bedtime at first, but then Lyra offered to read her thesis to her (a constant source of mystery and interest for Vera), and Vera gave in at once. Will was genuinely stunned to find Vera as attentive an audience to Lyra’s Econ Hist thesis as she was to storybooks. 

Will drifted off well before Vera did. When Lyra elbowed him (a bit roughly, he thought), he jerked awake with a start. He sat up and peered blearily at Lyra and Vera. Vera was snuggled up with Max and her baby blanket, her face innocent and passive in sleep, and Lyra was scowling at him. 

“You know,” she whispered, “even Vera made it forty pages in before she fell asleep.”

“Well, I’ve already read it, haven’t I?” he defended himself. “It’s all brand new and exciting for Vera.” If economics could ever be exciting. Which it couldn’t. 

“We worked all day, too,” Kirjava added. “Vera only played.” She and Pan had been lounging outside on the rope bridge in the cool breeze last Will checked, but they’d joined them sometime while he’d dozed. They were curled up together between Lyra and Will’s legs. 

“I suppose that’s true,” Lyra allowed. She reached over and patted his arm. “You’re excused.”

“Oh, thanks,” he said dryly. But he was smiling when she leaned over to kiss where his shoulder met his neck. His chest filled with warmth. He longed to pull her over into his embrace, so close that he could feel her heart beating against his, but they needed to get out of Vera’s room before they woke her. 

He pulled gently on her hand and nodded towards the door, and as soon as they were out of their daughter’s room, she looped her arms around his neck and lifted up on her toes to kiss his lips. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back just as gently and ardently as she’d kissed him. 

“Are you staying at your mum’s tonight? Or can I take you to bed?” she asked. 

He’d spent the past couple of nights at his mum and Mary’s to help watch over her—she was getting worse and worse—but he’d found some alprazolam in one of his medical bags earlier that day and he’d given his mum a low dose after dinner. She’d calmed within the hour and went happily to sleep, and it was very likely that she’d wake up in a panic in a couple hours looking for Will, but for right now, she was okay, and he could stay home. And home was where he desperately wanted to be. He didn’t like leaving Lyra and Vera alone at night, and he especially didn’t like drifting off to sleep without Lyra beside him. And currently, with his beautiful lover peering up at him imploringly from beneath her pale lashes, the thought of not going to bed with her was especially torturous.  He was quickly becoming overwhelmed by love and desire. It always astounded him how quickly both could flood his body. It only took her soft kiss and her clever, captivating eyes. He pulled her even closer and leaned his face down to kiss her again. 

“The second seems right,” he murmured between kisses. 

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Sleeping with her always took his mind to someplace new, someplace different. He became all at once dreamlike and hyper-focused, both incredibly at peace and bursting with sensation, feeling extreme desperation for her in one moment and severe relief at her touch in the next. He felt his fullest, his most complete, like he was every facet of himself all at once. It was the closest to sacred anything had ever felt, and if he were ever to get on his knees for anything, it would have been her. 

And afterwards, in her arms, drifting down from the high together was its own type of heaven, too. He wouldn’t have given that time up any more than he’d give up what came before it. There was something irreplaceable in the hot, exhausted moments right afterwards, with their skin sticking together and their hearts racing, with their bodies intertwined. He rarely felt so at ease as he felt then. 

When he wrapped her closer into his embrace and kissed her neck, he felt overcome with love so wild it felt nearly violent, like he could never hug her tight enough or grip her close enough. He felt certain she was feeling something similar as she gripped him back just as tightly. 

“I love you,” she murmured into his skin, and the fierceness woven between her words felt like a benediction itself. 

“I love _you_ ,” he corrected. 

“I’m glad you came to bed.”

He smiled against her shoulder. The skin of her back was soft like satin as he stroked his palms over it. “Yeah, me too.”

They dozed in each other’s arms for an hour or so, but eventually, they had to get up to ready for bed. Will changed the sheets while Lyra brushed her teeth and combed through her hair, and then they switched places in the tiny bathroom so Will could brush his teeth and get cleaned up for bed, too. They slid back into bed clean and cozy in their pajamas, and Will very much hoped he didn’t get woken in an hour by Mary because he had no desire at all to leave Lyra’s arms to go walking through the woods in the dark to his mum’s house. He hoped he was able to sleep through the night undisturbed. 

* * *

 

He wasn’t, of course, but it wasn’t Mary or his mum that ultimately roused him. He woke with a start to the sound of his daughter weeping. It was like a splash of ice water to his senses. He sat straight up and peered sharply through the darkness, spotting his little girl at once; she was standing at the foot of the bed weeping into her blanket, Max a sad-looking parakeet perched on her shoulder. 

“Vera, what’s wrong?” Will whispered, concerned. “Did you have a nightmare?”

She moved her blanket from her face at the sound of his voice and looked towards him. She crawled up onto the bed and scooted up until she could climb into his lap. Will cradled her like a baby and kissed her wet cheeks. She was trembling.

“Vera?” he asked, concerned. She was still sobbing quietly. “What? Do you feel ill?”

“I miss you,” she said, and then she started crying so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. Will was confused and alarmed. He tried to set her down so he could reach over and grab his glass of water from the bedside table—he thought drinking some water might calm down her gasping—but she lost all semblance of control when he tried to move her out of his arms. She locked her arms around his neck and held tight. 

“No!!” she begged. She was holding him so tightly that it was choking him. “Don’t go! Daddy, don’t! Don’t!” 

“I’m not!” he hurriedly gasped. He had to pry her back to get her suffocating hold to loosen. She squirmed back into his embrace the second he’d pulled her back, though this time she curled up against his chest and didn’t grab round his neck. 

“I d-d-don’t w-want you to g-go,” she wept. Will couldn’t remember ever seeing her so upset. It deeply unsettled him. He brushed her hair gently with his fingers and kissed her head, but her hysteria didn’t lessen much. It drew Lyra from her dreams, too. 

“Vera? What is it?” she murmured sleepily. She rolled over onto her side to face them. Pantalaimon blinked tiredly in their direction and nudged Kirjava questioningly with his nose; she shook her head once at him. Max was snuggled up to her heart, but he wouldn’t say much more than Vera had. He was trembling and nipping nervously at her fur with his beak. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Vera,” Will promised her. “Where do you think I’m going?”

“D-d-don’t go, d-don’t go, d-d-don’t go!” 

She wasn’t making any sense. She was so upset Will doubted she’d heard a word he’d said. He exchanged a baffled looked with Lyra. 

“Did you have a nightmare about Daddy going somewhere?” asked Lyra. Her voice shook a bit. She was as unsettled by this as Will was—maybe more.

Vera wept. That was the only sort of response they could get from her. Eventually, after both asking her questions in a variety of different ways, they gave up. Will rocked her in his arms and kissed her hair until she gradually calmed. And once she did, she still didn’t say what had upset her so much: she just curled up on Will’s chest and fell asleep, leaving Will as confused and bothered as before. 

“What was _that_?” worried Lyra. She sat up and peered down at their daughter. “I’ve never seen her that upset before.”

“I don’t know,” Will said, his heart sinking minute by minute. 

He and Lyra peered uneasily at each other. 

* * *

 

Will really thought she’d be over it come morning, so when she insisted—over and over again—that she didn’t want to go to school, he was more alarmed than he’d been last night with her gasping and sobbing. 

“What?” he demanded. He sat on the edge of his and Lyra’s bed and set his hand on Vera’s small back. She was hugging his pillow tightly. “You don’t want to go to _school_? It’s your last day.”

She rolled over to face him and grabbed his hand. She brought it over to hug it to herself. “I wanna stay with you,” she muttered sleepily. Will could tell from the unstable cadence of her voice that tears were imminent if he fought her. 

“Is this because I’ve been staying over at Nana’s?” asked Will. It was the only halfway-palatable reason for her behavior he’d been able to come up with as he lay awake for hours last night. The other one—that she had seen something in the future, something that would separate him and her forever—was too painful to indulge for even a second before his eyes burned and his chest seized up with sadness. 

“I don’t know,” she said. She was teary again. “I just want to stay with you.”

He wanted to interrogate her impatiently (so deep was his worry), but she was his little girl, and she was upset. So he took a deep breath, turned to lay on his side facing her, and accepted the hug she immediately scooted over to give him. He stroked her hair afterwards. She kept her face hidden into his shirt. 

“You don’t know why you’re upset?” he asked gently. 

She shook her head. “I only feel sad and I miss you.”

“But I’m right here,” he reminded her. “I’ll be here when you get done with school, too. You’re supposed to have your going away party with the school and play with Gloria afterwards, remember? Don’t you want to do that?” 

“No,” she said at once. “I want to stay here with my daddy.”

She’d told him that same thing over and over again so he had no choice but to respect it. He didn’t know what a proper father would have done—maybe forced her to go anyway—but he believed her when she told him what _she_ needed to feel okay, and he could tell if he tried to force her to go to school today that she’d become hysterical. He didn’t know _why_ , but he could sense the strong emotions churning just under the surface every time he glanced at her blue eyes, and the thought of her miserable and frightened and sobbing at school without him hurt. That didn’t feel like something a good father would choose. 

“All right,” he said softly. He’d planned on going to work for an hour or so to say his temporary goodbyes to his colleagues, but he wouldn’t be going anywhere now. “We’ll stay here. You’ll have to help me pack.”

At that, she started up again. She went from teary but relatively calm to having a full-blown strop, wailing and crying and grasping his shirt in her fists. Lyra had been working on her thesis, but she came running into the bedroom quickly once Vera started up. 

“What…?!” 

“I have no idea,” Will admitted, his voice trembling. 

Lyra hurried over and sat beside Vera on the bed. Vera accepted her comforting hug, but Will noticed she didn’t let go of his shirt even then. 

She might not have known what the problem was, but he thought he was starting to. 

* * *

 

They waited until she’d drifted off to sleep again, utterly worn out from her recent fit, and then they tip-toed together to her room to finish her packing. 

“I’m frightened,” admitted Lyra. She looked paler than usual. Will was glad he wasn’t the only one so shaken by Vera’s behavior. “Do you think she’s ill?” 

“No,” admitted Will. He shoved the last few items of Vera’s clothes into her bag. “I think she saw something when she was sleeping.”

He knew Lyra knew what he was talking about, but she played like she didn’t, anyway. 

“Like a nightmare?”

“No,” he said. He knew she’d been hoping he’d say yes. “Like something that hasn’t happened yet.”

She sat down on Vera’s closed suitcase so he was looking at her and only her. Her graceful hand caught his chin, forcing his eyes up to meet hers. Her expression was grave. 

“What do you think she saw, Will?” she demanded. 

“I think she saw us getting separated somehow.” 

Lyra’s breath left her like he’d hit her. He felt the same. 

“Well _that’s_ not happening,” she said fiercely. “So I don’t know how she could’ve seen that.”

Will didn’t want to think about it, but it was the only thing that made sense. “You saw how she reacted when I mentioned packing.”

“She’s five! Maybe she—I don’t know—maybe some kids at school mentioned their parents going on holiday without them and she’s got it in her head that we’re leaving without her or something—”

“She’s cleverer than that.”

That was indisputable. Lyra’s hand slipped from his face and fell down into his lap. Her blue eyes studied his, desperate, searching, and he wished he had better answers to give her. But _she_ was the one with the ability to find the truth, not him. 

“We can’t,” she said, and it was hardly more than a whisper. She shook her head. Her eyes welled at once with tears. Will’s followed suit. “We can’t be separated again, Will. Not like that.” 

He felt the same way. He’d sooner die. 

“And we _won’t_ be,” he told her, his voice low and powerful and resolved. That was the only thing he knew. There was _nothing_ that could keep him from his family. He wouldn’t let go of their hands for even a moment once they left this treehouse. “I’m not going anywhere. Whatever she saw—maybe that’s what would have happened had I not known about it ahead of time. But it won’t happen now.” 

She reached out and she held his hands. Her hold was tight. “I would find you, Will.” 

“I know you would,” he said. “But you won’t have to. Because it _won’t_ happen. Do you believe me?” 

She studied his eyes some more. He kept his face as fierce and open as he liked. There was no one to shield himself against. Lyra had always been able to see him as he really was. 

“Yes.” 

He leaned in and he kissed her once, and that one, sweet kiss turned into a long, passionate one, and then he had to force himself to move back because the sudden, desperate urge to take her in his arms and press her softly to the bed was alarming. It came from nowhere and it filled his chest with a craving so bittersweet it terrified him. It felt like part of him was trying to say goodbye. 

And she felt it, too. Her fingertips trailed the line of his bottom lip, her eyes studied him with such an intensity that he felt a shiver race to his bones. 

“I can’t,” he said, his voice low and trembling, his mind and his body at war. He was leaning into her touch even as he said it. “It feels strange. In here.” He set his wounded hand over his chest. 

“Like a goodbye?” she guessed, and he knew then that she was thinking of that last time they’d kissed when they were young—clumsy, passionate, rushed—and how they’d felt the same yearning sadness then. 

“Yes. Like that. And I won’t say it because I don’t need to.”

He felt he was right. He felt that there was nothing in this world as in control of himself as _him_ , and if he wouldn’t be moved from them, that was that. He wouldn’t will it to happen, and so it couldn’t. But he was also aware of the heaviness of the moment, as if making love to her now with goodbye in both their hearts would seal fate in some sort of way, and he wasn’t stupid enough to risk it. 

Instead, he brought her hands up to his lips and he kissed her knuckles. He kissed the backs of her hands after that, and then her palm, and then her wrist. He had to force himself to drop her hand and stop touching her because he knew he’d lose control of himself quickly if not. She had that sort of power over him. 

“So it’s going to be okay?” she asked him. She was searching for an absolute. He couldn’t give it to her, but he would anyway. 

“Yes. Absolutely. If Vera saw something, she only saw one _possible_ something. I decide what happens to me. _We_ decide what happens to us. And I won’t be parted from my family.”

* * *

 

He was right and he was wrong. 

He hadn’t widened his definition of _family_ enough to encompass every possible scenario. 

They’d traveled days and days back to the mainland, they’d rode in the back of a decrepit vehicle for eight hours straight to get to the conservancy, they’d hiked for three hours to find the door, and then—exhausted, hungry, and irritated with one another—they’d taken turns going through it. It was routine now. Step in, step through. Step in, step through. Mary had gone through first. Then his mum. Then Malcolm and Asta. Lyra and Pan were next; she was taking her turn carrying Vera—she was too young to keep up with the rigorous demands of the journey, both the physical and the emotional—and she seemed eager to get through so she could set Vera down and rest her arms. She drew close to the door, and then her way was blocked. Will felt his heart drop. 

“What?” Lyra snapped, annoyed. She tried to side-step the angel, but he mirrored her movement. Lyra adjusted Vera impatiently. “Move, my shoulder really hurts. I need to put her down.”

“Put her down,” the angel allowed, his voice measured and firm. “And then you’re free to step through.”

Lyra wasn’t following. Will wished he wasn’t. 

“I don’t want to put her down _here_ ,” she argued, vexed. She shifted Vera again. This time, her arms trembled, and for a moment Will thought she’d drop her. Pantalaimon looked back at Will nervously—he surely felt Lyra’s fatigue—and Will locked eyes with him for a second before hurrying forward. He reached out and took Vera from her arms. His back was aching terribly—he’d hiked with her on his back for a half-hour—but he couldn’t stand to see Lyra in pain. 

The angel stepped out of the way. “ _Now_ you may go through.”

Lyra’s eyes narrowed slightly. Confused panic flowed from Kirjava to Will. Will shot his hand out and grabbed hers to keep her from doing it, but she hadn’t so much as budged. She’d caught on. 

“Why couldn’t I carry her through?” she demanded. “We carry her through every time. What’s going on?” 

The angel spoke with no emotion whatsoever. “You may go through. Will may go through. But the child may not.”

He might as well have been smacked in the face. Will recoiled as if he’d been. At his feet, Kirjava hissed. 

“Why the hell not?!” Lyra yelled, up in arms at once. “What are you talking about? We can’t very well leave her here alone, can we?!”

“Certainly not—at least, I wouldn’t recommend it,” the angel said. “I wouldn’t recommend you going through the door, either. Because it won’t be used again. Not until Will fixes his mistake.”

“ _What_ —” 

Pantalaimon’s objection was cut off. Will interjected. 

“Get to your point and stop wasting our time,” he spat coldly at the angel.

He noticed that Vera’s hold around his neck had gotten tighter in her sleep. Max changed suddenly from a tiny hummingbird to a beetle and burrowed further into Vera’s hair. The angel turned to face him directly. 

“You did not follow through on your promise so I must follow through on mine. I will close this door in exactly two weeks if you don’t remedy your mistake, and whoever is on the other side of it will stay on the other side of it. You and your wife are more than welcome to go through it now, but you won’t be coming back. Vera stays here.”

“My _mistake_?” challenged Will, though somehow, he already knew what the angel was talking about. 

“There is one thing your daughter has been asking you over and over again for months. One thing you’ve refused above all else. You must let her. Vera needs to go to church. She won’t be leaving this world until it happens. You are more than welcome to follow your mother through to your world, Will, but that means Lyra must follow through on what must happen here. And if she doesn’t, I’ll close you out of this world forever.”

Will’s chest tightened with fear at the mere thought. He tightened his hold on his daughter, and Lyra took his hand and held it so tightly he could feel the rings she wore biting painfully into his fingers. Pantalaimon moved to stand between their legs while Kirjava paced nervously in front of them.

“Will,” Lyra whispered, her tone soft but urgent, and he didn’t even have to look down at her. He tightened his hold on her hand to show he understood. 

But it wasn’t that easy. 

“My mum is ill,” he told the angel, and when he thought of her waiting on the other side—confused, lost—his heart sank to his toes and his eyes pricked with tears. “She can’t stay here—this world makes her worse—but I can’t abandon her, either. I promise I’ll do whatever it is you think I need to do when we get back. But we must go through to my world now.” 

“As I said,” the angel countered calmly. “You are free to follow after your ill mother. But your daughter remains. You must choose.”

Choose? Between his _mother_ and his _child_? He had never heard anything more absurd asked of anybody. He stared in disbelief at the angel. 

“I can’t _choose_! They’re both my family! They both need me to take care of them! I can’t just abandon them! There’s nothing that needs to happen in this world that has to happen _right now_ ; we can fix whatever problem you perceive when we come back, but for _now_ , we’re going through to my world. All of us.”

He took a confident step forward, Vera in his arms, Lyra at his side. He partially expected the angel to try to fight him back—he was prepared to set Vera down and swing at him, he was much stronger, after all—but the angel didn’t. Instead, he turned and began searching the air in a familiar way. Will’s heart lurched. 

“Don’t,” he said sharply. 

“I won’t argue with you. You’ll listen to me and you’ll comply or I’ll shut this door once and for all.”

Shutting his mum out. Shutting Malcolm in. It would mean death for Malcolm. It would surely mean death for his mum, too, to be separated from _him_. But what could he do? He couldn’t leave his mum. He couldn’t leave his daughter. He stood in place, conflicted and tortured. Kirjava’s fur bristled as she walked nervously between his ankles. 

He couldn’t see a way through this. He had known deep down that his promise to the angel would come back to haunt him, and here was the proof of that, but it was harder than he’d imagined. Because no matter what he chose, he risked getting stuck with that decision permanently. They never really knew with any sort of certainty if the door would still be there every time they traipsed to it; it was a risk they ran going between worlds like this. It was why they’d all made a point to stay together. If they got stuck in one world, they didn’t want any of them to get stuck _and_ separated. And now here was half his heart on one side—his mum, and in many ways, Mary, too—and half on this one—Lyra, Vera—and he was expected to…what? Rip half of himself away? 

They needed him. His little girl, clutched in his arms right now, vulnerable and warm in sleep, her little arms melded around his neck. His mum—lost, confused, tormented, hunted and haunted and only comforted by him when she got this way. How could he live with leaving one of them behind? 

“You can’t ask this of me,” he heard himself whisper, his voice broken and quiet, and then he hid his eyes against Vera’s shoulder briefly. They were burning with tears. 

“You should have listened,” the angel said simply. He didn’t seem to feel any remorse at all. 

“Why does she need to go to church?” Lyra demanded. Her voice was wobbly, too. Will was certain she knew what a difficult decision this was for him. He knew she probably had no idea what he would choose, and then he thought of it from her point of view—thought about the uncertainty she must be feeling right now wondering whether he was going to abandon her and their child—and he felt a wave of nausea so intense he swayed a bit in place. 

“To fulfill what is destined, she has to take the first steps.” 

“But she’s—we can’t have her go to church because the Church is what’s trying to kill her! How can she do what she’s destined if she’s dead?!” Lyra said. 

“Because she won’t die. She’s much stronger and cleverer than you’re able to see right now. To you, she’s your baby in need of protection and comforting. But to the world, that’s not so.”

“She _is_ a baby!” Pantalaimon argued at once. 

In that moment, Will and Pan were thinking as one.

“She’s _five fucking years old_!” exploded Will. The words burst from him at the same time tears formed in his eyes. He had been fighting them back so long that once they formed, they flowed freely. “Pan’s exactly right: she _is_ a baby! It’s not fair! You can’t expect her to fix all your problems for you! She’s a child! A fucking _child_! She didn’t ask for any of this!” 

The angel watched on calmly as Will yelled. “And I don’t expect her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. All of this will come naturally for her. It will be her own choice, her own idea. I never asked you to force her into anything. I told you to _get out of her way_.” 

But he couldn’t. It was his job to protect her. It was his job to protect everybody he loved, but _especially_ her. And if that meant he had to protect her from herself—well. He’d been protecting people he loved from themselves since he was around Vera’s age. 

 _Calm down_ , Kirjava thought, but Will couldn’t listen. His chest was heaving around tight, pained breaths, and his tears wouldn’t stop. 

“You just want her to go to church? That’s it?” asked Lyra. Will spun around to face her, shocked that she was even considering it. She was watching the angel with a measured expression.

“Yes. That’s it,” the angel affirmed. 

Lyra nodded once. She set her jaw. “And if we do that, you’ll let Vera use the door again?” 

“Yes.”

“And we can use the door briefly right now, right, to say goodbye? If I’m to be separated from people that I love, you should at least let me tell them what’s happening and tell them goodbye. Malcolm should be given a chance to come back through, too, because this is his world, and if something happened and we all got stuck where we were, he would die.” 

“You and Will may go through the door. Your family may come back through it. But Vera may not.”

Will looked down at Lyra’s face. Lyra looked up at him. She had such fear and sadness in her eyes, but she was peering at him bravely, her chin held high. Will’s heart throbbed with a sudden burst of affection. 

“Well?” she asked him, and her voice broke a bit, but she didn’t cry. 

He didn’t know what to say. The choice was brutal, impossible. The thought of leaving his poor, confused mum all alone and possibly never seeing her again was agonizing…but the thought of leaving his family—Lyra, Vera—was absolutely unbearable. He peered down at her now and he couldn’t imagine waking up without her. He couldn’t imagine going through even a few weeks without her at his side. And his daughter…he thought to how distraught she’d been the past few days, how she’d clung to him and sobbed and begged _please don’t go_ , and he knew two things at once: one, he had made the wrong choice in another reality. Two: he couldn’t leave his child. 

How long had he longed for his own father? It had been horrifically painful to lose him forever. He _couldn’t_ take Vera’s father from her, too. He couldn’t. He couldn’t leave them. Not even if it meant leaving his mum. And that was a guilt-ridden, pain-filled realization to have. 

Though Kirjava had walked over to brush affectionately between Lyra’s ankles, Lyra took his silence for indecision. “I’ll do what I have to,” she told him quietly, bravely, where hopefully only he could hear. “I’ll send her to church, I’ll play this game, and then we’ll meet up again and—”

“No. Absolutely not,” he interrupted. The way his heart had crumbled at the suggestion told him he’d made the right choice. “I won’t be separated from you again, Lyra. Not ever. And I won’t be separated from our daughter.”

She looked relieved for a moment, but then she mastered it. “So what do we do?” 

Will turned to the angel. “It’s _Vera_ who can’t go through the door, right? But you’ll let our family through as needed?” 

“I have no qualms with them using it,” he affirmed. 

Will turned back to Lyra. “So you and I, we’ll stay here, on this side with Vera. If Mary can stay in our world with Mum for a few months—just long enough to help her recover—I can check on her now and then and then they can come back through to us.” 

“If she goes all the way to Oxford…” 

“I won’t be able to check on her, I know. But if they came right back to Namibia and stayed there on the conservancy we could just pop through as needed—”

“Only if we stayed nearby, too. Which means we can’t go _home_. We’d have to stay somewhere here…let Vera go to church _here_ …where we don’t know the community at all—”

“Right, right,” Will said quickly. He hid his face against Vera’s hair and groaned. He didn’t know what to do, and his chest felt like it was breaking open, and he didn’t want to have to make the choices he was making now. He had always known something like this would happen, but he had hoped it’d be much later on. 

He was so busy agonizing over everything that he didn’t notice somebody coming back through the door ‘til he heard Malcolm’s voice. 

“Everything okay? It’s taking you a while,” he greeted, concerned. 

“No. It’s not okay. Malcolm, he won’t let Vera go through…”

As Lyra explained the situation to Malcolm, Will felt Vera stir slightly in his arms. She yawned and squirmed closer, her arms tightening momentarily around his neck, and Will stepped to the side so she wouldn’t hear what Lyra was saying. He walked in calming circles with her like he’d done when she was a baby. She nuzzled her face against his shoulder. 

“Are we there?” she mumbled sleepily, all her words blurring together into one inarticulate jumble. Max—a beetle buried in her hair—changed suddenly to a mouse and turned to burrow beneath the collar of Vera’s shirt. 

“Almost,” he lied. “Go on back to sleep, Vera. I’ve got you.”

And his back was hurting so terribly he was worried he’d slipped a disk, and he was so tired his arms and legs were trembling, and he wanted to cry more than anything else, but he pushed it all away. He looked off to the side and he breathed and he overcame his desire to sob. He grit his teeth and he continued walking in steady, calm circles, never letting her slip in his arms no matter how fatigued they became, never considering setting her down onto the ground. She was sleepy, and she needed him, and he wasn’t going to let her down. He wasn’t going to let go. He couldn’t. 

He had spent his entire life overcoming his own fear and pain and uncertainty to take care of somebody he loved who needed him. Was now really any different?

“What are you going to do, Will?” Malcolm called, concerned. “Does your mum have to go back?”

“Yes,” Will answered at once. They all ignored the way his voice broke. “She needs to recover in our world. She may be able to find the help she needs without going very far, but she needs the sort of help she can only get in my world…I can’t help her here. She can’t even go in public in this world because she doesn’t have a dæmon…the isolation makes things worse; she’s got to go back…and I…”

He felt like he was betraying his own heart. 

“Will,” Malcolm said, his voice soft and bruised, “you can’t leave Vera…”

“No,” Will agreed. His vision blurred from tears. “But I can’t leave my mum, either.”

Malcolm took a step forward. His expression was drenched in compassionate pain. He reached out as if to help Will, but what could he do, really?

“There’s got to be a way. There’s always a way,” he said. 

“I can’t see one. The only thing I can think of is if we both stay close to this door, close enough that I can pop through every few days or weeks…so I can check on her…but then—if something were to happen—if the door were to close…”

He’d be separated from somebody he loved forever. The risk was much direr to Will and Lyra, who knew firsthand what that really felt like. 

“Look,” Malcolm said, turning to face the angel. “Can’t they agree to follow through on their promise once they’re back here? They’ll _have_ to come back, won’t they? And you can close the door forever if they don’t follow through on their agreement then. But don’t do this. Don’t separate us. You don’t understand all the things we’ve been through together. You don’t understand. We’re a family. We’ve all raised that little girl…I was there when she was born…don’t separate us. Don’t make us your enemies…don’t become ours. We know what Vera must do is important. We’re on _your side_. You have to know that. I’ve been on your side since Lyra was a baby. I know you see that. I don’t want to get in Vera’s way if she wants to fix the Church; I want to help her. Lyra and Will do, too. But they’re new parents. They’re young—they’re so young. And they didn’t really have parents themselves. Their decisions as parents aren’t guided by what they saw their own parents do as most people’s are…they’re just guided by their instincts and their hearts. And if _you_ had gone through the things they have at the hands of the Church, you’d be as wary as they are to put their _child_ anywhere near it. You can’t just tell them to throw their child to the sharks without any reason or guarantee that she’ll survive the attack. If we’re going to do this— _really_ do this—we’ve got to work together. This doesn’t feel like that. This feels like you punishing Will for not following you blindly. And, to be quite frank, resentment is a very weak human emotion.”

Lyra and Will exchanged a quick, surprised look after Malcolm’s impassioned defense. Even Asta was standing tall and proud a few feet ahead of him, her eyes fixed on the angel, her posture tense. The angel was quiet for a few beats. Will thought Malcolm had made some very good points, but he didn’t dare let himself hope. 

“This is not a punishment. This is an incentive. The sooner he fixes the problem, the sooner I let everybody through.”

“So if we marched Vera to church right now you’d let us through?” Lyra demanded. 

“ _Are_ you going to march her to church right now?” the angel countered. 

Lyra faltered at that. Will felt just as sick at the idea as she did. He looked down at Kirjava, and Kirjava thought the same thought he was thinking:  _we don’t know anything about the religious community here. For all we know, they’re on the lookout for Lyra. If they saw her with a child…_

His face must have betrayed his apprehension.

“Precisely. That is why I gave you two weeks. If I were being cruel, I would have given you only a few days.”

“But this _is_ cruel,” Will countered. His sadness was turning to rage quickly. “Two weeks separated from my mother is _cruel_. She’s not well—and she needs me—and it’s my job to take care of her! You can’t do this—”

“I think you’ll find I can,” the angel said. 

“You _shouldn’t_ do this!” Lyra snapped. “If you had any goodness in you, you wouldn’t!” 

“Why even let us get this far?” Will thundered. His rage was growing. Lyra’s was, too. “Why even let me get to Lyra at all in the first place if you were only going to threaten to separate us whenever you felt like it—”

“You know very well that’s not what I’m doing here.”

“You are! You’re telling us how to raise our child! You’re telling us what we _must_ do, what _she_ must do—”

“You’re just as bad as the Church, really! Using children for your own gain!” Lyra added hotly, and Will could tell that was the comment that had cut the angel deepest of all the ones they’d made. He moved quickly, his shape blurring as he fluttered his wings in offense, and Will feared Lyra had gone too far. He was afraid he’d reach out and shut that door once and for all. But Malcolm stepped in quickly. 

“Stop,” he said urgently. “Don’t argue. We’re on the same side—”

“Are we?” Will spat. He was glaring fiercely at the angel now, and his hands had curled into fists. “Because right now, he’s just something keeping me from my family.”

He was strongly entertaining the idea of ambushing him. He knew he could take him physically, but he had long suspected that this angel wasn’t alone in any of this, and he didn’t know if he could take on _multiple_ angels. 

“We are on the same side. You’re just too stupid with emotion right now to realize it.” 

Lyra stepped forward, her fists balled up, her arm muscles tensed as if she were ready to swing. “He’s _not_ —!”

“You be quiet,” the angel barked at Lyra. Pantalaimon snarled back at him, a strange, chilling, high-pitched noise. Will felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Will stepped closer to Lyra at once. The angel wasn’t done: “He doesn’t need you defending him. You two are trying to beat a game you don’t even know the rules to, and you’re going to hurt Vera, and you’re going to hurt yourselves. I told your husband what to do before she was even born. He _did not listen_. So I am forced to take matters into my own hands before things get much worse. And I know the only way to manipulate Will Parry into doing something he doesn’t want to do is by threatening his family. And because you and Vera are off limits, my only option is this. So from now until I decide the problem has been fixed, no one will come through this door. Nobody. Malcolm—you’ll stay where you are now. Nobody moves until this is fixed. Nobody moves until the future is back on track.”

Will set his jaw and tensed his muscles to spring forward at the angel, prepared to kick him or do whatever he had to do (he couldn’t really punch with Vera still in his hold), but Malcolm quickly stepped over and grabbed his arm tightly, holding him in place. Will nearly turned and hit Malcolm reflexively, but he caught himself just in time. 

“Don’t,” Malcolm warned him lowly. 

Lyra was already raging, though, and there was nothing that could be done about that. She yelled and scolded the angel, she pointed out that Will needed to at least tell his mum and Mary what had happened, she accused the angel of manipulating them and—and of all things—somehow manipulating her alethiometer. Will wasn’t sure how she’d made that leap, but she was on a roll, and he knew better than to interrupt. 

The angel ignored most of Lyra’s fit. “ _I_ will inform the two women of the situation. You three—if you want to fix this problem—will turn around and go back home.”

She was set to yell some more (Will could see it in her eyes), but she stopped short because her yelling had woken Vera. Will felt her shift and stretch slightly in his arms, and then she sat straight up like she’d been shocked, peered around them to see where they were, and promptly threw her arms back around Will’s neck and began weeping. 

“ _No, Daddy! No!”_

Will’s fears were confirmed. She had, at some point, seen this, and in the version of reality she’d seen, he’d chosen to go with his mum. It wasn’t an impossible choice for him to make by any means: the thought of her now, standing on the other side, confused and ill, waiting and waiting for him, made him feel sick. And it was true that Lyra could take care of Vera, but he was the only one who could truly take care of his mum. But he couldn’t picture himself walking away from his child. He had fought so hard to get to her. He couldn’t _leave her_. Not like his father had left him. 

And presently, he truly _couldn’t_ because she had him in such a tight, choking grip that somebody would’ve had to wrestle her from him to part them. 

“I’m not, Vera, I’m not,” he reassured her quietly, his left hand patting gently at her back. 

“ _D-D-Don’t g-g-go! I’ll m-miss you!”_

“I’m _not going_ ,” he told her firmly. He pried her back far enough to see her tear-drenched expression. She was hysterical. “Vera. Look at me. Now.”

“O-o-o-okay,” she gasped. She turned her face up, but her eyes were shut as she continued choking around her sobs. 

“I’m not going anywhere without you. _Ever_. Do you understand me?”

“I-I-I s-saw it!” 

“Then you saw something that will never happen. Because I’m not. And that’s my choice.” He turned to the angel. His heart felt horribly heavy. He couldn’t see past his tears. “That’s my choice.”

Dejected, heartbroken, he couldn’t even stand to look at the door any longer. He felt like a failure. He had failed to do what he’d sworn he would (protect his family). His poor mother—ill and confused—would feel lost and abandoned. He had spent his entire life looking after her, and now he was leaving her all alone—maybe even for good. What sort of son was he? 

Vera was calming down with every step Will took away from the door, but he wasn’t. He may have proven himself a loyal father, but by doing so, he’d proved himself a disloyal son. And he had never felt as wide-open as he did then. His heart might as well have been split apart and laid bare. 

Distantly, he heard Lyra raging at the angel. Pantalaimon was in her arms, hissing and yowling, and the two were arguing quite vehemently with the angel. But he wasn’t budging. Lyra’s complaints didn’t work. Malcolm’s reasoning didn’t work. Will’s threats wouldn’t work. Hopelessness washed over him. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Will said to Kirjava. 

“Me neither,” she said, “but we’re doing it.”

Logically, sensibly, he knew walking away now was the better thing to do. It would be better to be separated from his mum for two weeks than risk being separated from her (or Vera) forever, and if the angel wanted the close the door, there was nothing that Will could do about it. He was entirely at his mercy. It was a deeply unsettling place to be. 

“Lyra,” he called. His voice sounded weaker than he remembered it being. He didn’t like that version of himself. 

Lyra stopped scolding the angel at once. She turned and looked at Will, her expression soft with compassion and love, and when Will saw the tears sparkling in her eyes, he remembered that his mum and Mary were her family now, too. 

“We _can’t_ ,” she told him tearfully. 

“I know,” he agreed, his voice rough. “But we must.”

“You can’t leave her—”

“And I can’t leave _her_ ,” he interrupted, tightening his arms around their daughter. 

Lyra’s eyes softened even more. They seemed a lighter blue. She eyed the way their child was clinging to him. 

“No,” she agreed softly. “You can’t. And you can’t leave me, Will.”

She was strong—she could’ve gone on without him. She’d done it before, after all. But neither of them wanted that in the slightest.

“Fix the problem and come back,” the angel told them firmly. “I won’t keep you from them longer than I have to. I know this hurts you. But you must understand how serious this is.”

Will shook his head. Exhaustion crashed over him. He had to stumble back to sit upon a nearby boulder they often used for that purpose; his legs were quivering. He readjusted Vera in his arms as she tightened her hold on him once more. 

“She’s a child. What on earth do you expect from her?” 

“A revolution,” the angel responded. “And you’ll ruin it if I don’t guide you.”

 _Good_ , he wanted to spit. _Fuck your revolution. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except my family. I don’t_ want _my child to start a revolution; I just want her to be safe and happy. My mum and Lyra, too. I never asked for this—any of this._

But hadn’t he? 

He’d let something bigger than himself lead him back to Lyra, and they’d conceived their daughter, and he’d known from the moment he first found out she was pregnant that nothing would ever be normal for them. He had known from the first time he heard the baby’s heartbeat that its life would be strange and difficult. Hadn’t his and Lyra’s been? In a way, he had been complicit in all of this. 

Malcolm clarified a few more things with the angel, but Will could hardly hear past the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. He had to walk away now or he never would. He took a few trembling steps, the hours and hours of carrying his daughter weighing on his body, and he knew she was both awake enough and old enough now to be set down and made to walk, but he was afraid to put her down. He was afraid that if he let go of her, he’d find himself turning back to that door. Her tearful grip on him was a pinched and painful reminder of what he was walking away for. She felt like the only anchor left.

Lyra and Pantalaimon hurried to catch up with him and Kirjava. 

“Will, there’s got to be something we can do—”

Will stopped walking and spun to face Lyra. He couldn’t see her past his tears. His entire body was quivering. “There’s not. And it’s my fault. I knew this would happen—I should never have…” he stopped. Because even now, knowing he’d been separated from his mother and forced into putting his daughter in danger, he couldn’t think of another choice he could have made five years ago. He _had_ to find Lyra and Vera. He had to. Agreeing to the angel’s demands was the only thing he could’ve done. Right?

“So we’ll….we’ll…” Lyra was struggling to come up with a solution, too. “So we’ll bring her to church and then we’ll come right back here and we’ll have all this over within a week. And we’ll get them back, Will.”

“But it’s not just going to be taking her to church once. You know that, don’t you? This is just the beginning, the start of it all. No telling what comes next. No telling what demands the angel makes of our daughter next. I _can’t_ , Lyra, I _can’t_ —” he broke off and squeezed his eyes shut against the burning of his tears. _I can’t be the reason anybody I love suffers. I’m meant to protect them. It’s all I know to do. It’s all I’ve ever known to do. And now…_

Lyra’s hand—soft and warm—touched the side of his neck. She slid it up to cup his cheek. He leaned his face into her touch by instinct, the tears pouring hot down his face. He was so upset he hardly noticed Vera squirming from his hold. She fell down onto the ground, leaned against his leg, looped her arms around him and said: “Daddy, it’s going to be okay.”

But it wasn’t going to be okay. There was nothing okay about this. He’d had to abandon his mother, and even if it was only a temporary abandoning, there was always the risk of it happening again, or the risk of some of them getting locked out of their own worlds and ultimately dying, and it was all in the hands of this angel. It was all depending on Will sacrificing his daughter for the angel’s cause. It wasn’t okay. 

“Nana went to the doctor and they gave her _better_ tablets, Daddy, and then she feels much better, and then we’re all together again, and then we have spaghetti,” Vera continued, patting comfortingly at Will’s side. 

He laughed shakily at that even though he found none of it funny at all. Not their situation, not their separation, not Vera’s odd future-telling abilities. He wanted his life to go back to the way it was a year ago, when Vera was just his little girl expected to do no more than most children were expected to do—not keep secrets, not start a revolution, not peek into the future—and his family was together and secure, and he didn’t feel as if he’d led his daughter to the slaughter. 

Lyra kneeled down to face their daughter. She took Vera’s sweet face in her hands gently. 

“Vera,” she said, “is that a later-one? That memory?” 

Vera nodded.

“And when does it happen?”

“Later,” Vera answered. 

“But _when_ later?” Lyra pressed. “A week? Two? A month?” 

Vera was lost. When Will glanced down at her, she was studying her mum’s eyes helplessly, her dark brown pursed in concentration as she thought. She clearly wanted to give her mum the answer she sought, but she couldn’t. 

“I dunno,” she admitted. 

Lyra leaned in and kissed her nose. “That’s okay. We’ll figure it out. We’ve got to find a way to figure out more about your later-ones, don’t we?” 

Vera nodded. Lyra smoothed her hair back. “Perhaps we could…I don’t know, choose specific hairstyles for each month so we’ll know what month it’s in…or…no, I’ve got a better idea!” 

“Yes!” Pantalaimon agreed. 

“We could make bracelets for you to wear—a certain color for each month—and put the year on them, then any time you have a later-memory, you could look at your wrist and you’d be able to tell us when it’s going to happen! What do you think, Vera?” 

Vera thought hard again. “I think we’ll talk later, Mummy. Daddy’s crying.”

He was. He turned his face away at that, though, shamed to be showing his weakness to Vera in this way. He just couldn’t stop thinking about his mum waiting for him on the other side of that door. 

“Oh, yes,” Lyra agreed, glancing quickly at Will. “You know what would make him feel better?”

Vera waited eagerly. “What?”

Lyra set her hands on Vera’s shoulders and pulled her back from Will. “Could you walk back to Malcolm and tell him all about your later-memories so Daddy doesn’t have to? He’s tired and it would make him feel better not to have to tell it all over again.”

Will glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure Malcolm wasn’t too far behind, but he wasn’t; he was a few deliberate steps back, clearly trying to give them space. Will didn’t care at all about retelling anything, and he knew that Lyra knew that, and she had just said that to get Vera to step back so Will didn’t have to cry in front of her. She had clearly sensed his reluctance and shame. He felt a surge of affection and tenderness towards Lyra for it. 

Once Vera was holding hands with Malcolm and chatting nonstop at him, Lyra leaned against Will’s side and wrapped an arm around him. 

“I’m sorry,” she told him softly, and he knew she knew it wasn’t her fault, but that she was just sorry about the entire situation in general, too. 

He wrapped his arm around her, too. “Me too.”

“It’s not your fault, though. You know that, right? If anything, it’s mine. I messed up so many times, Will. First, I should’ve…well, I didn’t know as much as I know now, but I _should have_ known more, and I should have taken better care of myself…I shouldn’t have let myself get pregnant in the first place. And then, if I hadn’t done that, we could have found a different way to find each other again—a better way, a way not so contingent on that awful angel—and then this wouldn’t be happening…”

But that wasn’t right at all. Will shook his head at her. “No. That’s not…if it was anybody’s fault, it was _mine_ because I _did_ know better, but if I hadn’t made that mistake, we wouldn’t have Vera. And that would be horrible, too.”

“It would,” she agreed softly. “So maybe I should’ve been braver. I wanted you there so badly when she was born that I probably pushed you into making that deal with the angel so you could get to me. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so impatient, we could’ve found a better way then.”

“And that could’ve taken _ages_ ,” Will argued. “I might not have found you ‘til Vera was a toddler…or even later. I would’ve missed it all.”

His heart was raw at the very thought. The best time of his entire life had been the past few years, watching Vera grow and learn, taking care of her and loving her. What if he’d missed out on all that because he was trying to find a different way to get to them? What if he’d left Lyra to do it all alone? That wasn’t a better solution. Not even now. 

“There’s nothing else I could have done,” he realized. And when relief flooded over him, he met Lyra’s light eyes, and he realized without it needing to be said that _she’d_ known that all along. She’d just been talking him through to that realization as well. 

“No,” she agreed. “You did the right thing then. And I know it doesn’t feel like it, but Will, I think you’re doing the right thing now, too.”

Had anyone but her said it, he would’ve reacted with severe anger. But Lyra had a way of making him see things in a different way. She always had.

“So what do we do now?” she asked. 

A practical question. Will was thankful for it. It helped to get him thinking rationally again. He took a deep breath and looked up at the ever-darkening sky. They had probably a half hour ‘til darkness. It wouldn’t be enough time to get out of the conservancy lands. 

“Make camp for the night. Rest. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow,” he decided. 

He didn’t much like the idea of sleeping on the conservancy lands tonight—there were no nice huts for tourists in Lyra’s world, only stretches of wildland loosely manned by a single, ornery ranger with a fondness for whisky— but they didn’t have much choice. They couldn’t very well walk all night in the darkness. And it was obvious the angel wasn’t going to let them through. 

“Okay,” she said. If she felt apprehensive about it, it didn’t show. She took it in stride. “I don’t suppose we’ve got the tent with us?”

“We do, actually,” he said. It was the first positive all day. 

Lyra arched an eyebrow. “Were you worried about this happening?” 

“Not this specifically. I pack it every time we switch worlds. I’m always afraid we’ll end up on the run.”

“Fair,” she nodded. “That does seem to be the pattern with us, doesn’t it?” 

He knew she was thinking of all the time they’d spent on the run together, back when they’d first met, and thinking of those first few months with her made him smile for a brief moment. It had been difficult and traumatizing at the time, but now, looking back, he felt almost tenderly about the entire experience because it had brought him to her (had begun their love). And in a way, it made him feel better about all this, too. He had been separated from his mum then, and he’d made it back to her. What was to say this time was any different? He may’ve had the subtle knife back then, but he was older and wiser now, and that had to count for something. 

They walked until Will found a spot good enough to make camp. Getting settled in was second nature to them: Will put up the tent, Malcolm sorted through their snacks for ingredients for some sort of dinner, and Lyra and Vera gathered wood. Will had finished assembling the tent, got their belongings inside of it, and rolled out the sleeping bag by the time Lyra and Vera returned with their sparse haul. 

“Was that all there was?” Will asked. 

Lyra dropped her armful on the ground near the spot they’d decided to put their fire. Vera let her own armful drop, too. 

“Yeah. I didn’t want Vera to walk out any farther with it getting dark. Want me to—?”

“No,” he interrupted quickly. Of course, she couldn’t go out there alone in the dark—with or without Vera. There was an abundance of wild animals; it wasn’t safe for _anyone_ to go off on their own at nightfall. “This’ll do.” 

They’d been camping quite a number of times—Will had felt it was important to teach Vera from the start how to survive in the elements in case they ever _did_ have to go on the run—so it didn’t frighten Vera any. She helped Lyra start the fire and then sat in Will’s lap while Malcolm heated a small pot of water for some tea. Will knew she could sense his low mood; she kept hugging his arm and telling him that she loved him. It thawed his heart out as much as it could be thawed. 

They ate dried apricots, one cereal bar a piece, and some cream crackers. The tea was too hot; Vera burned her tongue on it and succumbed to overdramatic, exhausted tears, her face hidden into Will’s shirt, and when he carried her into the tent, she was asleep before he even set her on the sleeping bag. He felt he wasn’t too far behind. The day had exhausted him beyond all reasoning. From the arduous traveling journey to the horrific trauma of being separated from his mum and Mary, he felt he could’ve slept for years and still felt tired when he woke. 

“She’s asleep,” he told Lyra, his head sticking out of the tent opening. He yawned. His eyelids felt exceptionally heavy. “I’m about to follow suit.”

Lyra climbed to her feet. She dusted the back of her skirt off, set two more limbs in the fire, and stretched her arms over her head. She yawned, too. 

“I’m coming,” she told him. “I’m exhausted. Malcolm?” 

He and Asta were lying on their back beside the fire staring up at the starry sky. It was getting colder and colder the darker it became; Will knew it’d be warmer right beside the fire, but he didn’t much want to be out there alone in the dark, and he couldn’t imagine how Malcolm could want to. But he clearly did because he said: “In a bit. We’re going to rest out here for a little while.”

Lyra and Will readied for bed as best as they could and then crawled into the sleeping bag. It was a double one, so their family fit, but it was a cozy squeeze: Lyra curled her body around Vera’s, Max snuggled into Vera’s hair as a sleepy mouse, Will curled around Lyra, and Pan and Kirjava curled up above their heads, but they would stay warm, and he was glad to have them that close. He felt he could protect them better that way. Lyra must’ve felt the same way because she clutched Will’s arms around her and held him tight. It reminded Will of the way Vera had hugged his arm to her chest on and off as they sat by the fire, but instead of doing it to comfort him, Will got the feeling she was doing it to comfort herself. 

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. He pulled her tighter against him, his arms crossing over her chest to hug her to him, and it was only then that her body relaxed entirely against his. 

“I didn’t know,” she said, and he heard her voice wobble for a terrible moment as if she might cry. Pan nuzzled closer to her hair. Will’s heart jolted in panic. 

“Didn’t know what?” he asked, worried, automatically stressed. He didn’t like when she was upset. 

“Didn’t know if you’d stay.”

This time, his heart plummeted. His eyes and nose burned simultaneously. He felt sick with guilt. 

“I couldn’t leave you again, Lyra. I told you as much,” he reminded her quietly. 

“I know, but for a moment, I _didn’t_ know. For a moment, I thought…” she trailed off. “And I tried to tell myself that it would be okay—but—but it _wouldn’t_ be.” 

Her voice broke completely. Will’s eyes burned fiercer. He gripped her so close then that it hurt both of them, but neither made moves to loosen their mutual hold. He hid his face in her hair. 

“I _couldn’t_ ,” he repeated fiercely.  

“I don’t want to do it without you. Any of it.” 

“I know. I don’t want to do anything without you at my side, either.”

“And Vera…without you, Will…well, you saw the way she was acting.”

“I still don’t understand what she saw because I can’t imagine myself…” he trailed off, pained. It hurt too badly to imagine leaving his lover and their child behind. 

“I don’t know. And I don’t understand this—I don’t know, _power_ or…” she sighed. “Do you think it happened because we took her into a different world at such a young age? Like maybe it messed with her brain or something?” 

“I have absolutely no idea,” he admitted, troubled. “I wondered too if it had something to do with how she was conceived…I was me but I _wasn’t_.” 

“Or maybe it has something to do with what I went through…I mean, I was in and out of worlds for months…and there was that thing with the fairy when I was a baby…she said I was one of her because she breastfed me…well, _I_ breastfed Vera…”

“It could be anything,” Will decided. “We’ve done so many unorthodox things both before we conceived her and after the fact…there’s no telling what made her different. But I believe her, Lyra. I believe she sees what she says she does.”

Lyra blinked. “Oh, I do, too. That wasn’t ever in question.”

“So what do we do about it?”

She was quiet for at least a minute. Will was too tired to do anything but wait patiently. 

“Help her. She’s got to be so confused…it must be so hard to see things and not know if they’ve already happened or if they’re going to happen…it might help her to have those bracelets that I told her about earlier to help her tell _when_ something is happening. Maybe we could get her to keep a journal of what she sees. I suppose we could try to get her to ignore it, too; she says it happens mostly when she’s drifting off to sleep so maybe there’s an herb or medicine she could take to make her just drop right off to prevent her from seeing it at all. I don’t know. But based on her breakdown before we left, I think it’s starting to really torment her. I’m surprised she’s lived with it this long. It must be why she used to have those dramatic breakdowns all the time…we thought she was just prone to overreaction, but maybe she was getting upset over things that hadn’t even happened yet.”

It pained Will to think that their daughter had been suffering all these years without them knowing. He had never imagined that something was going on in her head out of the ordinary, but now that Lyra said that, he felt that some of Vera’s most legendary breakdowns made a bit more sense. Still, he liked to think (he hoped) that she was a happy child. He had no reason to think otherwise. And he would’ve known: _he_ was not a happy child, after all. 

“We’ll figure it all out,” she said, decided. “We’ll get back home; we’ll find a safe way to indulge that angel’s demands; we’ll find your mum; we’ll figure out what’s happening with our daughter and we’ll help her. It just might take some time.”

He didn’t know if she genuinely believed that or if she was just telling herself that she did, but he felt better right then regardless with her tight in his arms and Vera safe in hers. Part of him must have believed her, anyway, because Kirjava said: “We will. You’re right.”

He just felt it couldn’t happen soon enough. 


	10. one day we'll reveal the truth

“I think we’ll need more wood,” Asta commented.

Malcolm dropped the last few sticks from the pile into the sputtering campfire. A shower of red sparks flew up into the air as he did. As the flames eagerly began devouring the thin, pathetic twigs, he realized she was right.

“Definitely,” he said. He didn’t particularly want to go roaming around at dawn for wood— he was tired and hungry— but somebody had to do it. Determined to remain cheerful despite getting separated from his best friend, he stood up, dusted the dirt from his trousers, and set off in the direction most likely to lend him some wood. He’d only made it a couple steps before he heard the tent zipper dragging down. He stopped and turned, and because he knew the child as if she were his own, he wasn’t surprised to see that it was Vera. She had always woken with the sun.

“Morning, sunshine,” he greeted happily. He smiled at her tangled, bedraggled hair. Max was a smaller-sized anaconda twisted around her upper body. His tongue tasted the air lazily.

“Where’re you going?” Questioned Vera, automatically intrigued. She loved anything that wasn’t to do with her. He’d called her ‘nosy posy’ for most of her toddler years because she was insatiable; if it was something Vera wasn’t supposed to see or have, Vera was desperately determined to see or have it.

“To get more wood,” Asta answered for him. “The fire is burning it up quickly. It’s a miracle we kept it going last night.”

Malcolm had told Will and Lyra he’d wake them in shifts to keep it going, but he hadn’t wanted to disturb them. Their little family had been through quite enough. He didn’t want to disturb them. He had slept lightly beneath the stars, waking every hour or so to make sure the fire was still going (they needed the warmth).

“I want to go!” Vera cried at once. She ducked back into the tent, and before Malcolm could say a thing, she emerged with her coat on and her feet in her shoes. “I saw a pretty piece of morganite last night! It was on the ground but I couldn’t get it ‘cause I couldn’t put all the wood in my arms down and Max was being lazy and he wouldn’t go get it and Mummy kept saying we had to get back because it was going to be dark.”

Vera was at his side now. Malcolm smiled at her. “Morganite! When did you learn about that gem?”

“Last year or maybe next year. One time I read a book about it and it showed a pretty picture and so I know the gem I saw was that one. It was light pink. It was a big piece. I want it."

She was adamant. Malcolm had no interest in fighting her on it. She was as stubborn as her mother had been as a child and every bit as irresistible.

“Well, we’ll have to go see if it’s still there, won’t we? Let me just leave your parents a note so they know where we’ve gone.” 

He dug out the notebook and pen he always kept in his pocket. He ripped a page out, scrawled a note to let Lyra know he’d taken Vera with him in case she woke, and then he placed it carefully underneath Lyra’s shoe just inside the tent. Once he was certain Lyra and Will wouldn’t panic thinking Vera was kidnapped, he took Vera’s offered hand and followed her lead into the sloping desert lands. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. As they walked, she chattered on and on about all the things she was going to do with her giant chunk of morganite. First, she said she was going to have Will break it up into loads of pieces so she could make rings for everybody (“Mummy, Nana, Mary, Serafina, my teacher, and even you, Mal, ‘cause men can wear rings, too.”). Then she changed her mind and said she was going to try to melt it down to make liquid morganite (“Maybe it will do something magical if I change it to liquid!”). After a bit, though, that wasn’t good enough for her anymore. By the time Malcolm had an armful of wood, she’d decided she was going to take it home to study it with Mary’s microscope so she could write her very own book on it.

“Maybe there are little people that live on morganite and we just don’t know it ‘cause nobody ever bothered to look,” she mused. “I bet there’s all sorts of stuff!! Don’t you think, Mal?”

Malcolm smiled at her. “I think you’re a very talkative girl today. You slept well last night, I’m guessing?" 

Vera beamed. “Yes ‘cause I had my mummy and my daddy with me all night long. It was warm and comfy. Mummy’s hair smells good.” 

Malcolm laughed. “Well, I’m glad you slept well. Asta and I didn’t sleep at all.”

Vera looked gutted. “What?! Why?”

“We were trying to keep the fire going because it was so cold.”

Vera looked concerned and disapproving. “Sleep is important. Brains don’t work right without it.”

He shifted the wood in his arms. His muscles were beginning to cramp. “Right you are, Vera!”

“And I bet you miss Mary and Nana,” she added wisely.

Malcolm’s heart jolted painfully. He didn’t respond as quickly as he might’ve were they talking about anything else. His eyes seared for a moment as he thought about them; he hadn’t even said goodbye. He’d only stepped through to check on Lyra and Will’s progress…he’d never imagined he might never see them again. Mary— who had long been his best friend, who complimented him in ways nobody ever had before, who knew him inside and out, who was his ‘partner in academic crime’— might think he’d chosen to stay back without her. He never would have.

“I do,” he agreed softly.

“Daddy does too. He worries about Nana all the time, but she’s going to be okay.”

Malcolm treaded lightly. “Do you hope that or do you know that?”

“I know it ‘cause I saw it. But you haven’t yet. Mal, do you ever have later-memories?" 

Malcolm looked down and met her curious blue eyes. He wasn’t sure how to respond. He looked at Asta; Asta nodded once. He looked back at Vera as they walked.

“No, Vera,” he said honestly. “I’ve never had one before. My memories are only about things that have already happened.”

She furrowed her dark brow. After a moment, she stopped walking, reached down, and lifted a handful of dirt up.

“What about now?” she asked.

He wasn’t following. “What about it?”

“You got a memory of what I’m about to do with this dirt, right?" 

Malcolm was lost. “No. I have no idea what you’re going to do with that dirt. I can guess…maybe you’re going to drop it, or throw it, or blow it from your hand…but I don’t know because I haven’t seen it yet.” He considered what she was implying. He decided to test it. He leaned over and pulled up a sad-looking weed from the cracked earth. “Do you know what I’m going to do with this?”

She started giggling. “Something funny. I saw it last night.”

He’d planned on putting it in his mouth and chewing it with a comically exaggerated grimace. He dropped it back to the ground, surprised. 

“Do you see everything before it happens? Every part of your day?” he demanded.

She shook her head. “No, only some things, and sometimes what I see is different than what actually happens, I dunno why though.”

“Ah,” he said. He wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to ask more questions about her odd ability, but he didn’t want to interrogate her. “Do you tell your parents about the things you see?”

She nodded at once. “Yes. Mummy’s going to help me so I know when things happen. She’s making me bracelets.”

Malcolm wasn’t sure how jewelry was going to help anything, but he smiled and nodded at her. They walked a few minutes more— Max slithering along the ground, still in his preferred anaconda form, searching intently for the “morganite” Vera swore she’d seen— while Vera scanned the ground.

“I think someone got it,” she said sadly.

Malcolm shifted the wood over into his left arm so he could reach out and hug her to him with his right. “I’m sorry, Vera.”

“It was pretty,” she sighed. He thought it’d probably never existed in the first place, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Oh well.”

They walked slowly back to camp. Vera stopped anytime they saw anything slightly flammable and carried it back with her. Her parents were awake when they arrived; both Will and Lyra stood, relieved, as Vera came into view.

“Mummy, somebody took the morganite,” Vera complained at once.

Will nodded at the armful of wood in Malcolm’s arms. “Good thinking. I was wondering if we’d be able to keep the fire going long enough for tea this morning.”

“Tea isn’t optional. I have to have it,” he told Will gravely. “This should be enough.”

He sat beside the fire and began feeding it again while Lyra swung Vera around in her arms. He was putting the kettle on by the time Will pulled Vera into a hug. Malcolm sat back and waited for it to boil. He needed the caffeine more than he could say. It had been a long day prior and an even longer night. He still wasn’t sure he’d processed it if he was being honest with himself. Part of him still couldn’t believe they weren’t in Mary’s world already. They were supposed to go back to her Oxford— he was going to go with her and Elaine to see Elaine’s doctor— and he’d really been looking forward to seeing her Oxford. He wanted to visit the Trout Inn there, he wanted to see the building her lab was in, he wanted to visit the museums of her world. They had really been looking forward to it, particularly using the technology in her world; it was leaps better than here in Malcolm’s world, and the research they were doing together on the accumulation of Dust needed more technology than Malcolm’s could offer.

There was nothing he could really do about it, but he still felt he was allowed to feel disappointed. He was allowed to mourn what he was missing. And he was allowed to miss his friends.

“Mopey Malcolm,” Lyra said, surprised. She collapsed down on the dry ground beside him and knocked her shoulder against his. “Being mopey is Will’s job. The economy can’t support two; _I_ would know.” 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Will told Lyra, his eyes on Vera as he swung her back and forth by her hands. “I took over your job. I’ll be the impulsive one.”

Lyra scoffed. “You couldn’t be impulsive if our lives depended on it. You think too much.” 

Vera was giggling madly as Will continued swinging her. The sound warmed Malcolm’s heart. She showed no signs at all of mourning the family they’d left behind, and Malcolm knew that was just because she felt everything was going to be just fine with a surety nobody else could have.

“What’s wrong?” Lyra pressed, her voice softer now. She rested her head sweetly against his shoulder. Malcolm wrapped an arm around her shoulders automatically; he didn’t much want to talk about it, but he appreciated her concern and affection.

“I just miss Mary and Elaine,” he admitted quietly. He didn’t want Will to hear him. He knew that Will had to be missing Elaine infinitely more than he missed Mary.

“Me too,” Lyra whispered back. There was no point to whispering though. Vera was still laughing so loudly Will wouldn’t be able to hear a word they were saying over it. “And I’m worried about Will.”

Malcolm glanced over at him from the corner of his eye. Right now, with Vera giggling so happily with him, he didn’t look too upset, but Malcolm had known him long enough now to recognize the serious purse of his brow even as he tried to smile for Vera’s benefit.

“I know that had to be horrible for him,” Malcolm said back, his heart aching for Will and for Elaine.

“Yeah,” Lyra agreed quietly. “And I don’t think he was confident in his choice, either. I don’t think he would’ve been no matter what choice he made because it was an impossible, unfair choice for him…you know, that’s what Will does: he takes care of the people he loves. And making him abandon…” she trailed off, her voice thick. “I feel frustrated because I don’t know how to help. If there was a way to cut our own opening…but there’s not. And that’s frustrating, too. All this progress I’ve made these past few years and I still find myself helpless to control the things that I most need to. Like the security of my family— like Vera’s safety. She’s not safe now and she won’t be safe later. And the worst part was—”

“Mummy, watch this!” Vera was over beside them in a second, bouncing happily on her feet like a child in a toy shop. Lyra stopped talking at once and turned to look at her child. Malcolm was left wondering what she was going to say, but he couldn’t ask her because Vera took over the conversation as she showed Lyra the new “trick” her dad had taught her. Malcolm had felt like she really needed to vent so he vowed to find time to ask her about it again once they had a bit of privacy.

—————————————————

The opportunity didn’t come for hours. Traveling left little space for private conversations, especially with somebody as nosy as Vera around. She chatted for the majority of the trek back to the closest village, curious and intrigued by everything they passed. She maintained a surprising level of energy up until they got on the truck to head back towards the port that would take them via boat back to the island; she crashed almost as soon as she sat on Lyra’s lap.

“If we could bottle her energy, we’d be rich,” Will commented quietly. Malcolm laughed.

“She’s certainly in a better mood on the way back than she was on the way here,” Malcolm agreed. She’d spent their entire journey _to_ Will’s world subdued and anxious. Malcolm guessed she was feeling much better now that she knew her dad wasn’t going to leave her.

Lyra yawned and leaned into Will’s side. She pulled the sides of her long skirt up and folded them in to drape them over Vera’s legs like a blanket. 

“I can’t wait to be home,” she said tiredly. “I miss my bed.”

Malcolm thought of his own home on the island with longing. Between his flat in Cape Town in Will’s world and his island home, he much preferred the latter. But he had built it himself; everything was by his design. That lent a certain sense of ownership that he couldn’t get from a leased flat. He loved being in his sun room with hot chocolatl and a good book, peeking up every now and then to watch the distant waves crashing over the smooth rocks on the shoreline. It felt like home. He still longed for _home-_ home, but not as much now as he had at the start. And even at the start when the longing was the worst, he didn’t regret his choice to follow Lyra, and he didn’t think he ever would. She was really the only family he had outside of his parents, and she still needed him more than his parents did. With Lyra, he felt he had a purpose, like she was in some way his responsibility.

“Me too,” agreed Malcolm. He smiled suddenly. “And my books. And my sailboat. I miss the air, too— it feels too dry here.”

“Yeah. And it felt odd sleeping on the ground last night,” Lyra shared. “I’m used to being up high.”

Will didn’t join in on their discussion. He stroked Kirjava’s fur absently and watched with dead-looking eyes as Pantalaimon groomed his paws on the floorboard of the truck. Malcolm wanted to ask him if he was okay, but he thought the question might tip the scales towards tears, and he didn’t want to put him through that. 

“You and your love affair with high places,” Malcolm teased, hoping to keep the focus from Will. “Jordan roofs and now the tree house.” 

“You know why we really wanted the treehouse design, though,” Lyra reminded him. 

He nodded. “Yeah. And I think it’s served its purpose well. Nobody is getting to Vera with any sort of ease.”

He and Mary had designed treehouse together. Lyra and Will were searching for a secure home so they wouldn’t feel so vulnerable in Lyra’s world, and the treehouse had seemed a good solution. It’d been difficult work, but designing and building it was one of the most fun things he’d ever done, and one of the things he was most proud of. Creating a place for Vera to grow, learn, and be loved was quite a special thing.

“Will?” asked Lyra. 

Will glanced her way. He still looked lost inside himself. “Hm?” 

She tucked her skirt around Vera again. Malcolm doubted she even realized she was doing it. She seemed apprehensive about something. Malcolm understood when she asked her next question.

“When are we going to do it? Send her to church, I mean.”

Will’s face closed off insanely. If Malcolm thought he’d looked lost before, it was nothing compared to the way he reacted to that question. Malcolm felt a surge of nausea on Will’s behalf; he could tell the question had unsettled him so much that he felt genuinely ill. 

“I don’t know.” 

Lyra twisted one of her rings— the one she wore on her ring finger— around and around nervously.

“I don’t, either. But we’ve got to, Will. We’ve got to do something. Your mum—“

“You don’t need to remind me about her.”

Lyra didn’t take offense to his short tone. “I know,” she said patiently. “I’m only saying we’ve got to make a choice. If we’re going to send her, we’ve got to do it, and the sooner we do it the sooner we can fix all this. Unless…” 

Malcolm looked at her curiously. Unless what? As far as he could tell, there wasn’t another answer to any of this.

“Unless what?” Will demanded.

She turned her chin up a bit defiantly. “Unless we found another way through to your world." 

That statement was nonsensical to Malcolm (how the hell would they do that? They couldn’t!) but it meant something to Will. He looked away from Lyra, stressed and unsettled. Lyra peered evenly and stubbornly at him. 

“We wouldn’t have to do what that angel said—” 

“But we would be—” 

“No, don’t interrupt me,” she said firmly. “Listen to me. Just listen, okay? _If_ we found a way to mend the knife or use it as it is or something like that, _if_ we did, it would solve this problem entirely. We wouldn’t have to stress about sending Vera to church. She wouldn’t have to go.”

“Well, that’s a lovely dream, Lyra. But it’s impossible. It can’t be mended. Iorek said as much all those years ago. It’s worthless now.”

“We think it’s worthless. But we haven’t studied it—” 

“What’s all this _we?_ I’m a medical doctor. You study Economic History. We’re hardly fit to study and mend the subtle knife.” 

“You’re the only person who could study it and you know that. You’re just being difficult. You’re the bearer; you understand it,” argued Lyra.

“I was the bearer. I did understand it. Past tense. It’s gone, Lyra. It’s not an option. Our only option is playing  the angel’s game as safely as we can. And what we’re going to have to do to do that is go with Vera to church. We’ll go once and then we’ll come right back here and we’ll go back to my world.”

Lyra peered steadily at him. “Okay. And what then?” 

The question registered like a slap to Will. Malcolm watched him grimace a bit.

“What happens when he demands that Vera starts going to church weekly? What if he demands that she joins some sort of religious school? What if he demands that she leaves us to live in a priory? What then? We listen?”

“Of course not,” he said, and it sounded so much like a snap that it made Malcolm feel awkward. He looked away from them and hoped they wouldn’t argue. “When have we ever done that?” 

“A day ago! That angel has too much power over us.” 

“So what are you saying we do? Find a way to put the knife back together— which I still maintain would be impossible— and then what?”

“Then we go back to your world,” she said simply. “And we go back and forth as we need.” 

“And we hide from not only the Church here but the angel and whoever is working with him, too. We run from somebody else.”

That brought Lyra up short. “No, we’re not really _running_ from the angel, we’re just…separating ourselves from our dependence on him.”

Will shook his head. “No. I know that knife, Lyra. And I know we can’t mess with it again. We can’t. We’ll bring her to church, let her see what it’s like and play with Gloria, and then we’ll come back, and we’ll take it day by day after that. But she _won’t_ be harmed. I won’t let that happen." 

Lyra wasn’t happy with that. She looked away and sighed deeply. For Malcolm’s part, he certainly understood Lyra’s wish for the knife. The way they were going between worlds now was tiring and unreliable. But he had never seen the knife in action, had never wielded it like Will, and if Will felt it was too dangerous to consider recreating, he believed him.

“I’m just worried,” Lyra finally admitted. She brushed Vera’s hair back gently as she slept. “This time he separated you from your mum. Who will he separate the next time we don’t do exactly what he says when he says it? You and I? You and Vera? Me and Vera? Who? I can’t imagine…Will, the thought of me being here and you and Vera being elsewhere…” her voice was too thick to continue. The thought even made Malcolm’s eyes burn on her behalf. That would be horrible.

“That won’t happen,” Will said firmly, darkly. “We’ll figure something out, I promise we will. But we won’t be separated." 

"We _can’t_ be,” Lyra corrected. She was still looking down at her daughter and stroking her hair, her touch gentle, her eyes soft. Malcolm rarely saw her so tender. It was clear to him that being separated from her daughter would be debilitating for her.

There was a bit of tension in the back of the truck. Asta nudged Malcolm’s knee, and when he looked down at her, she thought to him to say something to ease it. He thought hard.

“So…how’s dinner at my place once we arrive? It’s a red day for Vera, right? I can do loads with that!” 

There was a brief pause, and then Lyra and Will made brief eye contact, and then they laughed. Malcolm beamed.

* * *

 

 Despite how exhausted he was, he couldn’t help but grin when he stepped into his home. He felt as if he’d just been wrapped up in a warm blanket. He dropped his bags to the floor and sighed happily. 

“Home again,” he said to Asta. She purred in response. “I’ll start dinner. Asta, do you remember if we have any beetroot left in the cellar?”

“I think so,” she said. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

He made for the kitchen. Lyra stepped up to walk with him. “I’ll come help,” she offered.

Malcolm smiled at her, bemused. “Help cook? You? No offense. But…you?”

She scowled and elbowed him. He laughed.

“Seriously.”

She waited until they’d stepped into the kitchen to respond. She lifted herself up to sit on the edge of the worktop while Asta sprinted for the cellar door.

“Will’s putting Vera down in your guest room. I thought we could talk.” 

He nodded knowingly. He stepped closer to the cellar so Asta would have more space to explore (their connection was beginning to pull painfully) and waited.

“I just….earlier, when we were talking, what I wanted to say was that…Malcolm, I don’t think I _could_ take care of Vera on my own. And obviously I don’t ever want to be separated from Will for any reason. Because I love him more than anything, and I couldn’t imagine life without him. But also, I can’t raise Vera on my own. I can’t. And I’m terrified because what if that ends up happening because of this angel? What if Vera and I get separated from him? And not only do I have to go on without him, but I fail our daughter, too by not being a good enough mum?”

It wasn’t what Malcolm had expected she’d say. He met Asta at the cellar door and grabbed the beetroot as she piled it in front of him. He clutched it in his arms as he processed her admission. 

“Why do you think that, Lyra?” He finally asked.

“Why do I think I couldn’t raise her alone?” 

“Right. What makes you think you couldn’t?" 

“Everything. I don’t…look: I’m her mum, and I love her and I would die for her in the blink of an eye, but Will is more her parent than I am. He does all the…parent-y stuff. He cooks for her, and he washes her clothes and her blankets and her toys, and he fixes her when she’s ill, and he tells her when to go to bed, and he monitors her diet, and…” she shook her head. “I couldn’t do all that. I wouldn’t know to do all that. If Vera lost her dad…I can’t imagine it, Malcolm.” 

“But you do parent-y stuff, too,” Malcolm reminded her. “You read to her, and you help her with her schoolwork, and you play with her, and you comfort her when she’s upset, and you enforce the rules, and you teach her things. Those are things that mums do.”

“I guess. They aren’t the things she couldn’t do without, though. She could do without somebody reading to her each night. She couldn’t do without medicine or food.”

“I disagree,” he said gently. “Vera couldn’t do without being read to each night. She really couldn’t. She needs that intellectual attention. All the things you provide for her are just as crucial to her wellbeing. And who’s to say you couldn’t learn to cook? You can cook a few things now, can’t you?”

“Three things.” 

He nodded. “Three is a decent start! You could do it perfectly if only you took interest in it. You’ve never had trouble picking up concepts. So you _could_ do all that if you had to, but you’re not ever going to have to because you’re not ever going to have your family separated. I believed Will when he said that. I did.” 

“I did, too. I just wish we had more control over all of this. I don’t like feeling trapped.” 

“Nobody does. But we’re not really trapped. We’ve got something that you and Will never seem to take into consideration when you’re arguing. We’ve got _Vera._ I know she’s little now, but Lyra, you must sense what a powerful person she’s going to be in her own right. She’s not going to let herself get separated from her family. She holds more power than we know yet…both over those angels and, I think, in general. I think the angel was right when he said that we should trust her.”

He’d really thought Lyra would argue with him on that, but she was quiet and thoughtful for a while afterwards. Pantalaimon sat beside her on the worktop and watched quietly as Malcolm and Asta began preparing dinner. Malcolm had finished peeling the beets by the time Lyra spoke again. 

“That actually makes me feel much better,” she admitted, and that made Malcolm feel as proud as he’d felt the day he’d finished building the treehouse. “I wish I could tell Will that, but I don’t know how to talk to him about this topic. We’re both so stubborn when it comes to Vera’s safety and it should be a stubbornness that works together, but we end up getting worked up and stressed and confused…we can’t seem to see eye to eye about what to do next. It’s an odd feeling ‘cause normally we’re a team on everything. But he refuses to even consider finding a different way between the worlds. I don’t understand it. He’s every bit as brave as he’s always been, I _know_ he is, but he won’t even _try…_ ”

It made perfect sense to Malcolm. “It’s Vera. Before when he was risking his life, all he had to lose was himself. Now he’s got a child to think about, a child that relies on him completely.” 

Lyra laughed. It wasn’t the reaction Malcolm had expected. He looked at her with interest. “What?”

“Nothing. It just makes perfect sense to me because that’s how I feel, too. Sometimes I think being a mum makes me weaker.” 

“Nah,” Malcolm said at once. His voice was firm and certain. He thought in particular about the early days of Vera’s life, about how confused and stressed and exhausted Lyra was— and about how she gave new motherhood every single ounce of energy she had and more. Malcolm remembered wondering how she could even stand upright, much less carry a tiny newborn around. “It makes you stronger.”

She sighed. Malcolm patted her knee.

“It’s going to work out. You’ll see. Everything always does. Have faith in yourself. Have faith in Will. Have faith in Vera. And have faith in me, too. I’m not giving up, either.” 

She looked at him like she was only just seeing him. “Oh, Malcolm, I didn’t even ask..how are you? It’s got to be hard for you…you were planning on going with Mary to Oxford, right?” 

He swallowed against the rapid narrowing of his throat. He would not cry. He wouldn’t.

“I’m okay. I’m disappointed— there’s a lot I wanted to do in Oxford, a lot Mary and I wanted to see and do, but I know she and Elaine will be fine, and we’ll see them again soon.”

Lyra shook her head. “How are you so certain? I wish I was that sure.”

“Have you looked at Vera lately? If our five-year-old prophet is confident enough to giggle like nothing out of the ordinary has happened, I believe her. She says Elaine and Mary will be reunited with us, and I’m sure she’s right.”

Lyra’s posture eased a bit with relief. “I suppose you’re right about that, too. I guess I have been underestimating her.”

“I’m sure she’d set you right if she knew it.” 

Lyra laughed. “Yeah, I bet.” 

Malcolm spied the two cloves of garlic Asta had already set aside for him and got struck by sudden inspiration. 

“Here, come here,” he suggested, lifting a knife and sliding a cutting board over near the garlic. “I’ll show you how to peel and mince garlic. It’s a good thing to know.” 

She looked a bit unsure, but after a second, she slid off the worktop and walked over to stand beside Malcolm. 

“So the first thing you need to do is press down with the flat part of the knife, like so…”

As he walked Lyra through the process, he thought about how much he missed Sister Fenella.

* * *

 

Will was pulled from his light sleep by Malcolm’s voice, echoing loudly through the house.

“DINNER!”

Will sighed into the pillow of the guest room bed. He rolled over onto his side and peeked at Vera. She was still deeply asleep; Malcolm’s cry hadn’t woken her. Will didn’t want to wake her, but she hadn’t had any proper food in nearly two days now, and he was worried about her. He didn’t want her losing weight. It was hard enough as it was to get her to eat enough to stay healthy with her fussy eating. 

“Vera,” he said softly. He reached up and gently stroked her hair from her face. She stirred slightly; her eyes moved beneath her pale eyelids, and her lips parted long enough for her to whisper something indecipherable.

“Wake up. It’s time for dinner. Malcolm’s made something red for you.”

Vera turned over onto her tummy and hid her face into the pillow like Will had been doing when he’d woken. Will stroked her back gently.

“Vera, come on, let’s go,” he urged. “Eating is important.” 

“Carry me then if it’s important,” she mumbled sleepily. Will arched an eyebrow even though she couldn’t see him.

“Sleepiness doesn’t give you a free pass for cheekiness.”

“Okay let me jot that in my notes,” she mumbled, and her voice was so sleepy that Will nearly missed her impressive— and rude— sarcasm. He was so shocked by it that he nearly didn’t respond at all.

“Would you like to spend your first day back home dusting?” He asked. 

Vera sat up at once, every bit of cranky sassiness evaporated. “Not even a tiny bit. I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sleepy and my brain doesn’t work.”

She looked so much like Lyra then with her mouth in a tiny, defiant pout that Will struggled to remain stern. To be fair, she had been through a lot the past two days, and she probably _was_ unbelievably tired. He’d have to keep an eye on her attitude, though.

“Let’s go eat the dinner that Malcolm made,” he said. “And no arguing.”

“Okay, no arguing from me,” she agreed. She threw the covers off her and stood by the bed. Max changed from a ferret to a bluebird and flew lazy circles around the room. Vera reached her arms up for Will; he automatically lifted her up into his arms. He knew the time was coming to tell her that she was too old to be carried around, but he dreaded it, and so he put it off. She was small for her age, anyway, so he figured she could still be carried for a little while more. “I’m sorry,” she told him again. “I’m not my best self.” 

Will laughed. He hugged her affectionately. “Oh, is that so?”

“Yes,” she said seriously. “Traveling doesn’t make me my best self.” 

Will was certain it was something she’d heard one of the adults say at some point, but it still made him laugh.

“What does make you your best self?” He wondered.

“Hm,” she said. “School.” 

Malcolm won her affections easily with his all-red dinner lineup. Vera proclaimed him the ‘best cooker in the world’ and sat happily at the table. Dinner was roasted beet salad with chickpeas and red onion; the kitchen smelled delicious from it and Will was starving. As soon as he sat beside Lyra at the table, she leaned over and boasted: “I minced the garlic.”

He looked down at her, impressed. “Seriously?" 

She nodded. “Peeled it, too. This cooking thing is not so bad. I dunno what I was avoiding all these years.”

Will reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned at once into him.

“Good, you can take over the cooking now, then,” he said lightly.

She sat back up. “No, best not. You’re much better at it.” 

He’d only been joking; he couldn’t imagine giving up control over mealtime. He liked being the one to decide what was being prepared and how.

“Did she sleep well?”

Lyra was looking across the table at Vera. She’d asked the question lowly enough that their daughter hadn’t heard. Will nodded. 

“Yeah. I did, too, actually. Didn’t plan on it, but she asked me to rest with her ’til she fell asleep, and then _I_ fell asleep. She slept like the dead. She was rather cheeky when I woke her up.” 

“She was earlier, too! Max was a tiny turtle for a spell on the walk back, and Pantalaimon told him to change into something a bit faster, and Max said something like…what was it he said, Pan? Pan?” 

She had to wait a moment; Pan and Kirjava were lounging in the windowsill on the other side of the kitchen. Once Pan leapt into Lyra’s lap, Lyra asked him again.

“Yeah! I told him ‘you need to change into something a bit faster, Max, and hurry up’, and he said back: “we’ll get there when we get there, Pantalaimon’, just like that, with that tone! I nearly bit his little turtle toes— luckily he realized he was being rude on his own and apologized, but I was shocked! He’s lucky he didn’t say that to Kirjava.” 

“I _would have_ bitten him,” Kirjava vowed darkly.

“Yes, well, she’s just told me traveling doesn’t make her her ‘best self’,” Will quoted. “I suppose she was telling the truth about that.”

“She’s tired. Not just physically, I mean. I think she’s tired of the entire process.” 

Will knew Lyra was right, but it made his heart hurt to think about it. It was a process Vera was going to have to do biyearly for as long as she lived. There was a chance she could live full time in Lyra’s world since that was the world she was born in, but there was also a chance she half-belonged in Will’s and half-belonged on Lyra’s, and that meant she was doomed to switch back and forth to stay healthy. Or, well, Will supposed there was a chance that meant she could thrive longterm in either one, but there was no safe way to figure it out. It certainly wasn’t something he was willing to experiment with with her as a child. 

He didn’t want to comment on that topic because he was worried it’d lead to talk about the subtle knife again, and he didn’t want that. He turned to Malcolm and started a conversation with him instead. He was sure that Lyra noticed.

* * *

 

 Lyra was glad to be home, but she wished it was under different circumstances. She set her bag down in the sitting room of her family’s treehouse and inhaled the familiar smell of home (sunshine, the flowers from the gumwood trees their home was situated in, laundry soap.) She felt almost tearfully relieved to find their traveling over, and she refused to let herself think about the fact that they’d have to do it all over again soon.  

“Don’t even _bother_ unpacking,” Vera muttered to Maximus. “It’s a gigantic, humongous waste of our time…”

Muttering underneath her breath, she and Max went off towards their room without another word. Lyra looked up at Will. He was already looking down at her.

“I’m starting to get the feeling she’s a bit irritated by all the traveling,” Lyra commented.

“Yeah, I think you’re onto something there,” agreed Will dryly. He set the camping bags down. “I think she’s right, though. There really isn't any point unpacking. Let’s just try to use the clothing we left here until it’s time to go back.” 

Lyra nodded. “Fine by me.”

Will rubbed his face tiredly. A deep yawn followed. “How likely do you think it is that she’ll go to sleep at a decent hour?”

“About as likely as the Church dying off quietly in the night. She had a power nap at Malcolm’s. She’ll be talking our ears off all night.” 

Lyra was correct. Vera begged them to play with her for an hour or so (they completed a puzzle, built an airplane out of tiny colorful interlocking blocks from Will’s world, and were a captive audience as she read her ‘thesis’ to them). And after that, in hopes it’d wind her down for bed, they read book after book to her, but she was more interested in discussing the books and taking turns reading them than lying there sedately listening. Will heated up some milk and made her drink that, and Lyra combed lavender oil through her hair, but she still showed no signs of slowing. Finally, after both dozing off right in the middle of another puzzle, Vera took pity on them.

“It’s your bedtime,” she told them. “It’s time to go to sleep.”

“That means for you, too. You can’t stay up all by yourself,” Will reminded her.

Vera sighed. “I know. I’ll just play quietly in my bed ’til I feel sleepy, okay?” 

Ordinarily, they would have argued. But it’s not as if she could go anywhere; they still had the locks and alarms on their bedroom door so that Vera could only get from her room to theirs and absolutely no further. She couldn’t get into any trouble in her own bedroom or in Lyra and Will’s. And maybe Lyra was just feeling especially lenient due to how tired she was, but she didn’t see any point in forcing herself to stay awake. She’d done plenty of that when Vera was a newborn.

“Okay,” she said. “You stay in your bed though. Deal?" 

Vera was already gathering toys and books to pile in her bed with her. “I got them all ready so I won’t have to get up at all!”

Will seemed less content with Vera’s plan, but he was just as tired as Lyra. They made Vera brush her teeth and use the toilet one more time, they waited as she changed into her nightie, and then they tucked her in bed with all her toys and books and kissed her cheek. Will turned her bedside lamp on while Lyra straightened her blankets. 

“See you in the morning,” Lyra said.

Vera pulled a heavy encyclopedia into her lap. “Will we be going to church in the morning?”

Lyra and Will both froze up for a moment. The question made anxiety flood Lyra’s body. She frowned.

“I don’t know. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Vera knew better than to push it. “Okay.” She reached for Lyra’s hand and held it to her cheek; Lyra stroked her skin gently with her thumb. A second later, she reached for Will’s, too, and brought it over to cradle her other cheek. She looked up at them with such a gentle expression that all Lyra’s impatience melted away. “I love you more.”

Lyra smiled. “More than…?” 

“Just more. ‘Cause I can’t list everything in the entire world.” 

Will leaned over and kissed her hair. Lyra sat back down on the edge of the bed and squeezed Vera to her in a tight, affectionate hug. She felt swallowed up by love.

“We love you just the same,” she swore.

She was still feeling tender as she and Will (finally) crawled into their own bed. She’d told herself earlier that she’d have words with Will about his refusal to even _consider_ her suggestions about the knife and their future, but once they were actually in bed, she didn’t want to do anything but snuggle up inside his warm, heavy embrace. All their problems felt very far away, though she knew somewhere in the more logical part of her brain that they weren’t.

“Tomorrow?” Will asked.

It amazed her as it always did how she knew what he was asking without him really asking it.

“I don’t know. We could wait. But what’s the point of doing that? It’ll be just as dangerous tomorrow as it’d be next week. And every day we wait is another day we’re not any closer to finding Mary and Elaine again.”

He tightened his arms around her. “That’s exactly what I think, too.”

She smiled. It felt right to be on the same page with him again, to feel once more like a united team rather than a confused one. It was a good place to end her night; she let herself drift off to sleep.

* * *

Lyra kneeled down nervously outside the church building. Her heart was pounding away in her chest; at her side, Pantalaimon was pacing nervously around her feet.

“Okay,” she said. She reached out and straightened the collar of Vera’s dress. “Do you remember the rules?”

Vera nodded once. She was practically vibrating with excitement, and Maximus was changing forms every couple of seconds. “Yes! I keep all our big secrets, and I sit by you and Daddy, and if I want to sit by Gloria, she’s gotta sit by me, and your name is Lizzie, and—and—Mummy, look! Look at those ladies! They have their heads covered up!”

Lyra glanced in the direction Vera was peering. A throng of Church ladies with dark-colored clothes around their heads were streaming out of the building. Lyra had no idea why Vera found them fascinating, but then again, she’d found everything about this experience fascinating so far. She’d gawked at the tiny granite statue of an angel just outside of the modest-looking building, she’d skipped giggling around the tidy rows of flowers lining the stepping stones leading to the entrance, she’d gasped and pointed at the wind chimes hanging from some of the nearby trees. Lyra could only imagine how hyper Vera’d get when she was actually inside the church watching an actual Church service.

“Stay by us,” Will reminded Vera again, his voice firm and serious. He gently nudged Vera’s chin upwards so she was looking up at him. He peered down into her bright, clear eyes. “You do _not_ leave my side for _any_ reason. Do you understand me?”

Vera nodded quickly. “Yes, yes, I understand. Is it time to go in now?”

“I guess so,” Lyra said uneasily. The few people who been chatting outside like Lyra and her family were had already walked in. Lyra didn’t want them to be the last inside; it’d draw more attention to them than they’d already have being new attendees.

“All right. Give me your hand,” Will requested, and Vera sank her little hand into his larger one at once. A second later, Lyra felt his calloused hand close around hers. She looked up at him; his jaw was set and his eyes locked forward. Lyra squeezed his hand gently.

She’d made up her mind to get through this as solidly as possible. She would sit beside Will and Vera, breathe, and do what she had to do. She told herself that it would be okay. It would only be an hour or so, and then it’d be over, and they could go back and get the rest of their family back. But when they stepped into the small, stuffy room, her surety snapped in half. Lyra stopped walking at once. Her hand slipped from Will’s. Before he could turn and ask her what was wrong, she and Pan reversed slowly, slipping behind a large group that’d just walked in behind her family. She ducked out of the still-opened door and back out into the sunshine. Because she’d recognized the man standing at the front of the church with Father Cain: it was André Quinto, the man running the re-established League of St. Alexander. She had only met him one time, but she remembered the meeting with severe clarity in the way one often remembers extremely painful experiences. He had seen her, spoken with her, watched her face as she sobbed and gasped and told them that her daughter was dead. And now he was in the church. And so was Vera.

Lyra staggered back to lean against the church building. She leaned over and lifted Pantalaimon up. She gripped him close and felt his heart pounding just as hard as hers was.

“Did he see us?” Pan asked. 

“I don’t know,” Lyra said. A wave of dizziness washed over her suddenly. Debilitating nausea followed.

“I think I might be sick,” Pan said. He was trembling. “What do we do?”

He was beginning to panic. So was she. Her chest felt tight, and her head was spinning, and her breaths were coming shallowly and quickly. She wanted to both run away and run inside. She didn’t want them to see her— to connect Vera to her if they hadn’t already— but she couldn’t leave, either. She couldn’t walk away. What if Quinto had already seen her? What if he realized who Vera was? What if Vera and Will were in trouble? No, she had to stay. But she couldn’t risk getting them in trouble by staying, either. If Father Cain or Gloria saw her and introduced her as Vera’s mother or otherwise connected the two, it would all be over.  

Pantalaimon was right there with her. “We can’t risk them seeing us…I’m sure he’d recognize us. I’m sure he would…”

Lyra turned and backed up a bit to survey the church building. “There’s got to be another entrance ‘round the back. What if we went in another way while everybody is watching the service? We can peek and make sure Vera and Will are undetected and then slip back out…”

“Okay,” Pan said. He was still trembling in her arms. She was certain he was sharing her nausea. 

“Let’s walk around back. Will must’ve realized…he would’ve followed after me if he didn’t.”

“He never saw that man, though,” Pan reminded her nervously. “He wouldn’t know who he was. What if something is wrong? What if somebody has him and Kirjava— and Vera and Maximus?” 

Lyra’s heart squeezed at the very thought. She shifted closer to the closed doors. She leaned in and rested her ear lightly against the gap between the double doors. All she heard was calm church music; there was no yelling or shouting.

“I think he just realized something would’ve had to be really wrong to make us retreat so quickly. I bet he’s staying still so as not to draw attention to him and Vera. He’s good at that, at blending in.” 

It would be Vera’s saving grace. 

“We need to find out for sure,” Pantalaimon said.

“We do,” Lyra agreed.

She took a few calming breaths, steadied her resolve, and then followed around the edges of the building ’til she found a door near the back. It had one small window near the top; she lifted up onto her tiptoes and peeked inside of it. A gauzy sort of curtain covered it, but she was able to see through it enough to realize it led to a tiny kitchen. There was a woodburning stove, an anbaric hob, and a worktop cluttered with tinned food. Lyra waited and watched for as long as she could. When her legs trembled enough to make her lower back down to the flats of her feet, she decided the room was empty and would hopefully be so for a few minutes more. She tentatively tried the doorknob.

“Of course,” she groaned.

Pantalaimon nudged her ankle. “Lift me up.”

She scooped him up into her arms. As soon as he moved to perch carefully on her shoulder and began picking through her hair, she understood. She was ready when he dropped the hair pin into her hand. She pried it open, kneeled in front of the doorknob, and stuck the pin into the hole.

“It’s just like the doorknobs at St. Sophia’s,” Pan commented. “So if we…yes!” 

He was right. She found the catch inside in the same place she’d thought it’d be; she pressed against it with the pin, and as soon as she heard the soft _click,_ she turned the knob. The door swung open at once. She slipped inside the warm kitchen and kept the doorknob turned as she shut the door behind herself (so it wouldn’t _click!_ and possibly alert people to her presence).

She and Pantalaimon crept quietly to the only interior door. It didn’t have a window which made them nervous. They had no way to know what they were opening the door up to. For all they knew, it’d open up right at the puppet, right in the middle of the service. She knew she could’ve stood there with her ear pressed to the door and waited to try and hear something, but she didn’t have the patience for that. With her breath held and the fingers of her left hand crossed tightly at her side, she turned the knob and opened it slowly. She peeked out of the crack she’d made. She saw a dim corridor. Relief flowed between her and Pantalaimon. 

“I’ll go first,” he whispered. “I’ll stay low to the ground. I’ll see if I can spot them.”

Lyra didn’t like waiting here alone, but she knew he had a much better chance of making it there undetected. 

“Okay.” 

She waited anxiously in the kitchen as Pantalaimon slinked down the corridor, his red-gold fur shining in the soft light. She kept her eyes on him through the crack in the door ’til he turned to slip through another door near the end of the corridor. She waited for a minute that felt like an hour, and then he was shooting back towards her, quick and panicked (she could feel it flooding her chest, too.)

She kneeled and scooped him up into her arms the moment he slipped back into the kitchen. His heart was pounding hard; she could feel the pulse and tremble of the blood coursing through his veins. 

“What?!” Lyra demanded, her mind flooded by the worst possible scenarios she could imagine.  “Vera?”

“No,” Pan said urgently. “Will and Vera are fine. They’re just sitting there with Gloria while Father Cain speaks. But that man— the Church one— the one running the League of— he’s coming back this way!”

Lyra spun around and crossed the kitchen. She went to walk back outside, but when she turned the doorknob, she was met with resistance.

“What the sodding…?” She turned the doorknob sharply to the left again, certain that it couldn’t have locked from the other direction, but it had. “It won’t open!”

“What?! What sort of door locks both ways—”

“The kind that never get used, or aren’t supposed to be used, or…where’s my hair pin?!” Lyra had been searching her pockets frantically with her free hand. She’d thought she’d dropped the pin there once she’d opened the door before, but she was coming up empty. She didn’t have anymore in her hair. She could hear doors shutting from the corridor now. Her mind was working too fast. She didn’t have time to think; she could only react. “Okay. Plan B.”

She grabbed a butcher knife from the counter. Pantalaimon inhaled sharply. 

“Lyra, no!”

She ignored him. She dropped him to the floor, reached down for the hem of her long, dark skirt, and lifted it up. She stabbed the tip of the knife through the fabric and began slicing roughly through it, around the entire hem, until she’d cut a good eight inches off of it. She set the knife down and brought the fabric up and began twisting it around her hair in the same way she’d seen the churchwoman wearing coverings over their hair earlier.

“Get me an apron, hurry,” she said urgently. 

Pantalaimon had crossed the kitchen, snatched an apron dress from one of the hooks, and brought it back over to her by the time she finished messily securing the fabric around her hair. She threw the long apron over her outfit; it thankfully covered her terrible hemming job. She scanned the kitchen frantically as the footsteps echoed closer. She spotted a bulb of garlic in a little ceramic dish; with a burst of relief, she snatched the knife up again, swiped the garlic from the dish, and moved to stand in front of the wooden cutting board so that her back was to the entrance to the kitchen. She’d just pulled one clove free from the bulb when the door opened. Pantalaimon stood between her ankles, mostly hidden beneath her apron. 

“Not that I’ve seen,” a man’s voice said. Lyra didn’t turn as he— and what sounded like other men, too— stepped into the kitchen. “But the community could be lying to us.”

“And has Samuel checked the schools?” It was Quinto’s voice. Lyra was amazed how easily she recognized it.

“School. There’s only one. It’s incredibly tiny. He said the teachers are kind and knowledgeable, but they were not at all receptive to the idea of integrating the church into the school.” 

“Hm, pity. Sister?” 

Pan nipped at Lyra’s ankle. She realized they were talking to her. She was too afraid to turn around; what if Quinto recognized her? But it’d look suspicious not to. She half-turned her head to glance at him from the corner of her eye.

“Yes?”

He wasn’t even looking at her. He was examining the food cupboard. “We’ve traveled a long way today and we’re rather famished. What can you make me?”

Lyra froze for a moment. She looked down at the garlic in front of her. She struggled to remember some sort of dish she’d seen Will or Malcolm making that included garlic that she could at least pretend to make.

“I’m making lunch for everybody right now,” she lied. “We’re having garlic cauliflower soup.” 

She crushed the clove with the flat part of the knife like Malcolm had shown her. She peeled it quickly and got to work mincing it at once, hoping that if she appeared busy, they’d go. But they didn’t. They grumbled about not wanting soup and began rummaging through the cupboard once more.

“Slice us some cheese,” one of the men ordered. Lyra glanced around again. They’d found some crispbread.

“Certainly,” said Lyra, even though she would’ve much rather sliced her own fingers off than served them.

She opened the ice box and peered into it. She had some trouble locating the cheese, but they weren’t paying her any mind. They were seated at the rough-looking table a few feet away, murmuring to each other about something Lyra couldn’t hear. She located some cheese, made her way back to the cutting board, and began cutting it into thick, uneven slices while listening to try and make out what they were talking about.

“So far, no sign of anything notable. I think the new informant is a fool, if I’m being honest,” Quinto said.

One of the men laughed. Lyra glanced over at them. She looked at them long enough now to count them: there were five men, including Quinto. They were all wearing nice-looking suits and such. They looked tired.

“Be fair, Andre,” the shortest of the five men said. “He’s the only person on earth who can read an alethiometer. So what he’s not perfect at it? The fact that he can do it at all is pretty impressive. Have you ever seen one before? They’re bloody confusing.”

Lyra’s hand had slipped as soon as they’d said _alethiometer._ She bit back her pained cry as she sliced into the side of the pointer finger on her left hand. She quickly moved it and stuck it into the pocket of her apron. Her face felt hot; her finger began throbbing. She did her best to ignore it and focus once more on their conversation. She couldn’t afford to make a spectacle of herself. Not right now. 

“I have seen one. And he’s not the _only_ person left.” 

“As far as we know, he is. And I still think he was right. Just because we haven’t seen anything noteworthy here yet doesn’t mean it isn’t here. It just means we haven’t found it. He said the alethiometer kept leading him here; it said the future of the Church resided _here._ We should trust in him.”

“The only man I trust in is the Authority. If _he_ calls out to me and says this is where we should be, I’ll stay. Until then, I say this is a waste of time,” Quinto argued firmly. 

Lyra wanted to agree with him. She wanted to say _I’ve lived here all my life and there’s nothing interesting here— you should leave._ But she knew it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to speak out and share her opinion without being asked for it. It would draw attention to her.

“Is that cheese ready?”

Lyra kept her wounded hand in her pocket as she lifted the entire wooden cutting board with her right. She carried it over to the men and kept her face downcast as they took the cheese slices and set them on their own plates. Thankfully, they paid absolutely no mind to her. She might as well have blended in with the wall.

“Better hurry,” one of the men commented to the group. He checked his wristwatch. “The service will be over in five minutes. We’ll need to get to the nursery room right before classes start. If the child we’re looking for is here, the best place to question them will be away from their parents.”

Lyra’s heart squeezed. The hand holding the cutting board trembled slightly. She turned and hurried over to set it down before she dropped it. Without pausing to think if it was safe to do so, she turned and walked from the kitchen. As soon as she was in the corridor, Pan left the safety of her apron and hurried ahead of her.

“This way,” he said. He was moving towards a wooden door. “This’ll come out on the left side of the room. Will and Vera are sitting near the front. Or they were, anyway. 

Lyra walked faster. She was nearly running now. 

“Will won’t let her go to religious classes all by herself, Lyra,” Pan reminded her.

She knew that, but she wasn’t comforted. Because the Church was here looking for a child. They were looking for _her_ child. They just didn’t know that, yet.

Nobody looked twice at her as she slipped through the side door into the worship hall. Father Cain was leading the churchgoers in prayer; they were kneeling on tiny, padded ledges on the floor in front of the pews, their heads bowed and their hands clasped— all except Will. Lyra spotted his dark hair easily. She hurried over and kneeled by the end of the pew. Will sensed motion and turned. He looked past the two elderly women blocking his way from Lyra and studied her odd appearance. Lyra placed a finger over her lips and then gestured towards the exit urgently. Will nodded at once, his lips pressed into a firm line. At his side, Vera was kneeling with all the other churchgoers, her tiny mouth moving as she presumably prayed. She wouldn’t want to leave. But they had to. 

Lyra moved towards the back of the church and sat in the very last pew. She didn’t hear a word Father Cain said as he ended the service. She sat still in the pew and waited as people flooded down the aisles, waiting to jump in and join Will and Vera. But they didn’t come. Lyra turned and squinted towards where they’d been sitting, confused, but then she saw what the problem was: Father Cain had joined Gloria. He was chatting with Will. And at his side, Quinto. Lyra hadn’t even noticed him rejoining the service.

Seeing that man so close to Vera made Lyra see red for a moment. She stood without thinking. She surged from the pew and against the flow of people without thinking, heading back towards the front of the room, towards her family. They were in trouble; she had to get Vera away from that man…

“Lyra, don’t!” Pantalaimon hissed. He stepped in front of her, nearly tripping her up, and that was enough to get her to slow slightly. “If Vera sees you—”

It was too late. She was too close. Vera turned to glance over at something, and as she did, her eyes landed on Lyra. Lyra watched as her little face opened with genuine joy. Her lips pressed together to utter the first sound of the exclamation “ _Mummy!”._ But then Will scooped her up into his arms and twisted them around so Lyra was out of sight. His grip on her was so tight it was probably painful. That seemed to surprise Vera enough to quiet her.

Lyra was close enough now to make out most of what they were saying.

“And do you like school?” Quinto asked Gloria and Vera. 

“Oh, yes, sir! It’s wonderful!” Gloria exclaimed.

He looked at Vera next. Vera still looked baffled. She was trying to twist in Will’s arms to look back at Lyra, but Will was holding her too tightly for her to.

“And you?” Quinto prompted. “What’s your name?”

“It’s fun,” Vera said, her voice flat and distracted. She didn’t answer his second question; Lyra was thankful for that.

“And you? You’re a single father?” He questioned Will gently.

“No,” Will answered, his voice clipped. “My wife’s ill. She couldn’t make it today." 

“That’s a shame. I’ll pray for her,” Quinto said kindly. He smiled down at Vera next. “You’ll pray for your mother too, won’t you, little one?” 

Vera nodded slowly, her blue eyes wide and confused. 

“Would you two girls show me the way to the classroom? I have arrangements to sit in and observe the religious education classes this morning,” Quinto said.

Lyra’s heart seemed to skip two beats. It was uncomfortable. For the first time in her life, she came close to praying herself, but it wasn’t the Authority she was talking to. _Please don’t let her go, please don’t let her go, please don’t let her go…_

“Gloria would be happy to, wouldn’t you, Gloria?” Father Cain said.

“Yes!” Gloria beamed. “Come on—”

Will interrupted before Gloria could say Vera’s name. “We can’t. I’m sorry, Gloria. You’ll have to show him on your own. We’ve got to get medicine home to Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth. Farther from Lyra than Lizzie, but still in line with her fake identity in this world. And he had kept the man from hearing Vera’s name. Lyra could’ve walked over there and kissed him.

“But it’s so fun!” Gloria protested. “We make things and eat snacks and learn about the Authority!”

Vera clearly knew something was up because she didn’t try to argue with Will’s decision. She sat still and obedient in his arms and looked up at him to respond.

“She’ll be glad to join you next Sunday, I’m sure." 

“Well, thank you for coming,” Father Cain said. He didn’t sound resentful at all; he sounded genuinely pleased that Will and Vera had stayed as long as they had.

“It was so wonderful,” Vera gushed. Lyra could tell she meant that. Even in that tense moment, it worried her. She had never found herself so genuinely baffled by her own child. She couldn’t understand what Vera liked about church, and it seemed strange to her that a person born from the two people Lyra knew best— herself and Will— could be at once so familiar and alien.

Lyra forced herself to move with the flow of traffic so that she was walking from the church building with everybody else. She didn’t want to draw undue attention to herself. Once she was outside, she stepped over to the side of the walkway and sat on a stone bench beside the granite angel statue Vera had gawked at earlier that morning. She took the apron off after she got an odd look from somebody, and as she did, she realized the front was stained with blood which probably attributed to the odd glances. She balled the apron up so the blood stain was hidden, sat it beside her on the bench, and then lifted her wounded hand to inspect it. The cut was still pulsing blood. She didn’t think she’d need more than a stitch or two, and Will could do that at their kitchen table in less than five minutes, so it didn’t bother her much beyond the dull pain and throbbing of the wound itself. 

As soon as she saw Will and Vera’s dark hair, she stood and hurried over to them. She and Will shared a tense, significant glance, but nothing was said. Will took her injured hand in his, tightened his hold on Vera’s, and began walking briskly towards the path that would take them home. He didn’t comment on the blood sticking her hand to his. She didn’t, either. Even Vera was quiet and focused on the task at hand: getting home as quickly as possible.

They didn’t speak until they were up in their treehouse, with the ladder pulled up and locked so nobody could hope to follow them up, and Kirjava and Pantalaimon scouting the surrounding trees to make sure they hadn’t been followed. As soon as Lyra sat down on the sofa in their sitting room, she began to tremble. Vera climbed up into her lap and latched her arms around Lyra’s neck. She hugged her tightly.

“Does your hand hurt, Mummy?” she asked gently. 

Lyra shook her head. She clutched Vera tightly to her heart and hid her face in her fragrant hair. Her heart was pounding away in her chest; she felt a bit sick. The reality of the situation hadn’t hit her ’til then. Vera had been right in front of a high-ranking Church member. Had he realized who she was, she could’ve been taken. It was every nightmare that ever kept Lyra awake at night. And they had survived it. 

“What did you do to this?” 

Lyra looked over at Will. He was holding her injured hand; she hadn’t even noticed him grabbing it. He peered hard at her finger.

“Sliced it. Oh, Will, things are getting dangerous…”

While Will pulled the suture kit from the medical cupboard tucked in the corner of the room, Lyra told him everything she’d overheard in the church kitchen. She told him about the new alethiometrist, about him telling the church that the ‘future’ of the church was here on this island, about the fact that they must’ve known the future of the church was a child because they were planning on interrogating the children here and had already tried to set up a presence at the school…

Will listened with an unreadable expression. He was quiet as he cleaned and sutured her wound. It required three more stitches than she’d guessed it would. Her finger was numb and stinging when he finished, and her heart felt similar. She wasn’t sure what to say, wasn’t sure what to do. They’d done what the angel said, but it had only made things worse.

“I don’t think they know who Vera is. Nobody saw you,” Will finally said.

It was the only hope they had in this situation. “Should we leave just in case?”

“Leave?” Vera asked. She’d been quiet the entire time, watching her parents talk with a worried expression, Maximus clutched tightly in her arms. She spoke up now, though, her dark brow pursed with worry. “Forever?” 

Lyra and Will didn’t answer. Vera’s eyes swelled with tears.

“But we live here. We can’t leave forever.” 

Lyra thought of her home, of Jordan. One certainly could leave forever, but she hated for Vera to be run from her home just as she’d been. Vera thought of this island the same way Lyra thought of Jordan: it was her childhood adventure land, it was her safe place. It was teeming with wonder and comfort. For Vera, there would be no place quite like it. And she may never see it ever again if they had to leave. It made Lyra want to cry to think of all the things that had been taken from her— all the things that would inevitably be taken from her daughter.

“If they’re looking for us, we can’t stay,” Will told her gently. 

“But—but I don’t _want_ to go!”

“I know. But life isn’t about doing what you want. One day, you’ll understand that.”

That did little to comfort their daughter. She began crying, but it wasn’t her typical tantrum-type wailing: it was quiet and sad and hopeless. Lyra cradled her close and kissed her scalp, wishing she could help, wishing she could solve this problem. But she wouldn’t even know where to start.

“Mummy, I want to stay,” Vera wept into Lyra’s shoulder. “We just got back— we just did!”

“I know,” Lyra soothed. She felt her own longing for Jordan well up inside of her. She wanted to cry with Vera. “But your safety is most important.”

Right then, Vera clearly didn’t agree with them. She cried and cried. And after she couldn’t cry anymore, she said: “I can make them nice! They’re just confused, Mummy, because they don’t know the right things— they don’t know the truth— and I can tell them the truth and then they will be kind, and loving, and clever, and brave, and they won’t do the awful things they do now! I can fix them, I can!”

Of all the things that had been said that day, Lyra thought those words frightened her the most. It seemed a cumulation of all the whispers that had surrounded her child since her conception.

“No,” Will said sharply. He seemed just as troubled as Lyra by those words. “You’ll do no such thing. That’s not your job, Vera. Your job is to be a child.”

“I’m a child no matter what, ‘cause I’m only five! I’m a child and I can fix them!” she argued. She was getting adamant now. She pulled back from Lyra’s arms and twisted in her lap to peer desperately at her father. “Daddy, they’re wrong! The Authority wasn’t the real God! I know the real God and she talks to everybody all the time only nobody listens to her the right way! I heard her in that church and she told me—”

Will was frightened now. Lyra could see it in the sharpness of his eyes. “Nobody told you anything. Religion is a scam, Vera. Whatever you heard, it was something else— your imagination, or your intuition, or maybe even something from the future. It wasn’t any sort of god. There have been hundreds of religions in my world and this world that have tried to say a god exists, but none of them have done anything but spread violence and misery and hatred, and if a god exists, he’s evil for allowing all that.”

“No, Daddy!” Vera’s face was turning red in her frustration. Max had been a tiny lovebird nestled in the crook of her neck, but he was fluttering agitatedly above her head now as an owl. “That’s ‘cause they were wrong! They believed the Authority and he was a liar! The real God wouldn’t agree with any of that awful stuff, none of it, and she’s the reason we’ve got Dust, and she’s the reason we’ve got all these worlds and all these amazing ideas and she’s the reason you and daddy could find each other, too, and she’s the reason you made me that day when you found Mummy and—”

“Vera,” Will interrupted, startled. “Where did you hear all this? Who have you been talking to?” 

Lyra was more than a little alarmed at the things spilling from Vera’s mouth. They knew she could see things from the future, but she hadn’t said anything about seeing things from the past. And yet, she knew things she shouldn’t have known, things they would never have told her, and it was more than a little concerning.

“Akka, Daddy, you’re not _listening_ to me!” She was growing even more upset. “I told you and I told you! And I got to fix the church— I got to! I don’t want to run away and you can’t make me!”

It was the wrong thing to tell Will. Lyra saw his rage swell within him. For a split second, she was afraid he’d grab Vera and scream in her face the way he had that night in the woods. But after a tense moment that felt doubled in length, he backed away from them. His voice was even when he spoke.

“I can and I will. The only thing you’ve ‘got’ to do is listen to your father. And I told you we’re leaving to keep you safe. And that’s _final_.”

They held a tense, combative gaze— Will staring sternly and evenly at Vera, Vera glowering angrily at him— and Lyra knew she needed to intervene. Their tempers had never clashed like this before, not really; she didn’t know what sort of damage they could do to each other emotionally, but instinctively, she felt it was a lot. 

“I think we all need to calm down,” she said. It felt odd to be the rational one. She felt all out of sorts. “We’re upset, and we’re confused, and we need to…to…take a break. Let’s have lunch and we’ll talk about this later…” 

“But there’s nothing to talk about. It’s over. I’m the adult. And I said we’re leaving.” Will turned. “I’ll go make lunch.”

As soon as Will left, Vera slipped off Lyra’s lap and yelled angrily. After that, she fell to the floor dramatically and began sobbing her heart out. Lyra wasn’t sure what to do. Her instinct was to comfort her daughter, but she didn’t know if she should after she’d argued so vehemently with Will (especially when she wasn’t even sure whose side was the ‘right’ side).

“Vera,” Lyra finally said after a probing nudge from Pan. Pantalaimon leaped down and curled around badger-formed Maximus a second later. Lyra kneeled beside Vera and wrapped her arms around her daughter, too. Vera cuddled into her embrace at once, sobbing heavily with all her heart, and Lyra wanted to cry with her. She didn’t understand her own daughter. She had made this child, she had carried this child, she had birthed this child, nursed this child, raised this child— and she did not understand her. That hurt more than anything else. “Look at me.” 

When Vera looked at Lyra, Lyra’s eyes were blurring with tears. That surprised Vera enough to get her to calm a bit. 

“I don’t understand,” Lyra admitted, and her voice broke. “I don’t know who Akka is. I don’t know how you know the things you know. It frightens me. But I know you’ve got to be confused and frightened. And I know that you’re my daughter, and I know that I love you, and I know that I’d do anything to keep you safe. Your dad feels the same way, too. You’ve got to give us some grace, Vera, and we’ll give you the same.”

She only cried harder. “B-But I’m t-t-telling you and y-y-you’re not _listening!”_

Even now, Lyra remembered what it felt like to be young and bursting with conviction and to feel like nobody was listening to a word you were yelling their way. She hated that she’d made her child feel like that.

“I’m listening now, then,” Lyra said. “Come here.” 

Vera did. She sat back in Lyra’s lap and Lyra cradled her in her arms. “Tell me again.”

“Akka made Dust and Dust made our worlds, and angels, and all of us. That was the first thing. Akka controls the Dust and so she controls everything. You know her, Mummy.”

Lyra had to force herself to remain patient and calm. “Do I? Did I meet her when I was younger?” 

“Yes. You talk to her. She talks to you through your alethiometer.”

Lyra’s heart jumped in her chest. She felt a thrill of excitement race down her spine. “How do _you_ know this, Vera?”

“‘Cause it’s the truth. I felt it before, but I didn’t _know_ it. I knew it when I went to church. When I was sitting there, and everybody was talking to the Authority, I was thinking out to the real God, ‘cause everything I heard about the Authority seemed wrong. All the things in the Bible…I didn’t like them. But I like so many things about life, Mummy. I like you, and I like Daddy, and I like my dæmon, and I like fruit, and the ocean, and chocolate…those things had to come from somewhere good. And when I thought to Akka, Akka thought back to me, in the same part of my head I see my later-memories. She told me about Dust. She told me about you when you were little, about Daddy, and she told me about me being made, and she told me that I was going to fix the church and make it pure again, ‘cause I know the truth, Mummy. But I’m the only one who knows the truth. ‘Cause nobody else has things in that part of their head like I do. Just me. And I gotta tell people…I gotta fix it. ‘Cause if I don’t stop this bad idea of church, people aren’t going to live good lives, and they won’t be able to do what you and Daddy tell them to. They won’t have any good things to tell the harpies. And Akka never wanted her people to be imprisoned for all of eternity. She wants us to be happy. Dust is happiness; it came from her heart, like I came from yours and Daddy’s.”

What was there to say back to that? Lyra was at a loss. When she looked at Pantalaimon, he was equally speechless. She felt, though, like parts of information in her brain that had once been marooned by gaps were bridging together. She’d always know the Authority hadn’t really created the universe…but she hadn’t stopped to question what force had made _the Authority, or_ what force had created the Dust that condensed to make the Authority. And here was an answer to two more lifelong holes in her knowledge: what ultimately controlled her alethiometer, and what Dust ultimately was. Her head was spinning.

“Why do you have that part of your head?” Lyra asked. She knew Vera was probably trying to say that she could think in a different way from other people, but she was careful to keep Vera’s terminology so as not to confuse her.

“‘Cause I’m Vera Parry, and you’re my mum, and Daddy’s my dad, and I was made special.”

It didn’t tell Lyra anything, really. All babies were technically made special; no two were alike. “Is it because Daddy was visiting me and not really there?” 

“No. It’s because of all the Dust. You and Daddy have the most of all. Except for me.”

Lyra nodded slowly. “And the Dust…it enables you to see things that have happened? And think things to…Akka?” 

Vera nodded firmly. “Yes.” 

Lyra wasn’t sure where to go next. She knew she needed to speak with Will, though.

“Do you know how Akka expects you to change the church?” 

Vera’s brow furrowed. “I only know bits and pieces. I see a few parts at a time. I think I’ve got to trick them somehow.”

Lyra didn’t like the sound of _that._ “Can Daddy and I help you?” 

“Yes. You do help me. I saw that before.”

Lyra felt the first wave of relief she’d felt since the conversation began. At least she and Will would be with Vera, no matter what happened. That was an immense comfort to her. Her greatest fear of all was being separated from her daughter.

“Can you talk to Akka anytime you like?" 

“No. I don’t know how it works. Akka said I got to practice.” 

Lyra nodded. “Okay. Well…maybe my alethiometer will work better now that I know who I’m talking to. I’m going to ask it about what we should do— whether or not we should leave here, I mean— and I’m going to share all of this with your dad, okay?” 

Vera nodded. She looked worried. “Does he hate me?”

The question felt like a kick to the gut. Lyra swept Vera into her embrace again at once. “ _No,_ Vera. Daddy loves you more than anything in the entire world. How could you ask that?” 

“He was angry with me,” she whispered.

“And you were angry with him. And sometimes, you and I are angry with each other, and other times, Daddy and I are angry with each other. We all still love each other just the same.” She leaned back and kissed Vera’s nose; she smiled despite herself. “How can such a clever girl see everything so clearly— even the future— and not see that?” 

Vera looked up at Lyra with her eyes swimming in tears. “I want him to be proud of me,” she whispered, and Lyra felt it was very mature of her to be able to put that feeling into words.

“He always is.”

“He doesn’t like all of this. I know he doesn’t.”

Lyra knew she was talking about the church and about her own newfound abilities. Lyra had to tread carefully.

“It’s not that he doesn’t like it. It’s just that he’s worried about you. He just wants you to be normal and happy and safe…he never wanted your life to be as wild and unstable as ours was when we were little.”

“But I’m just me,” Vera said. “I can’t help that." 

“No,” Lyra agreed. She stroked Vera’s dark, wavy hair back behind her ears. “I suppose not. Good thing, too. We wouldn’t want you to be anything other than you.”

“Daddy would; he wants me to be _normal._ ” 

Lyra regretted her words at once. “He wants you to be as safe and carefree as a normal child. That’s all.”

“But I’m not normal. I was made special,” she said again. It made even less sense to Lyra this time around. Made special? Well, Lyra had certainly felt like the occasion of her creation was special, but she was biased.

“I know. And we love you,” she said. She kissed Vera’s nose, her cheeks, her forehead. Vera was smiling when she pulled back. She reached up and cradled her daughter’s little face between her hands. “Try to nap before lunch. It’s been a long morning.”

Vera nodded. Maximus turned into a bunny and waited patiently at Vera’s feet for her to lift him up. As soon as he was cuddled in her embrace, the two headed towards Vera’s bedroom, hopefully to rest. Lyra’s eyes sought Pantalaimon.

“What now?” Pan demanded.

“We tell Will and Kirjava everything we just heard.”

* * *

 

 Will listened and didn’t interrupt once as Lyra and Pantalaimon told him what Vera had told them. He cooked the entire time she spoke, never pausing, and when she finished speaking and he did say something, it wasn’t about the revelation the their daughter could talk to the creator of the universes in her head.

“Let me check your finger,” he requested. 

Lyra didn’t want to push him. She turned in the kitchen chair and held her hand out. She looked up at the ceiling as he pried the bandage off, checked her wound, applied some sort of liniment he had in his pocket, and then rebandaged it. After he did that, he sat down in the chair across from hers. Lyra met his eyes, and for a minute or so, all they did was look at each other wearily.

“I don’t think she’s lying to us,” he finally said. “Part of me wishes she was.”

“Me too.”

“It should confuse me. But somehow, it all makes more sense. That frightens me a bit.”

Lyra nodded once in agreement. She’d felt something similar when Vera had first told her, that sensation that things that had long been mismatched were finally clicking together. 

“I don’t suppose we can fight it much longer.”

“I don’t think so, either. I think something will start fighting back if we do,” Lyra agreed. 

“Vera, for one. I’ve never seen her as adamant as she was earlier. And I’m right to say that she’s a child and she’s got to listen to us, but…”

“She knows things that we don’t. And that’s strange. It makes me feel odd, Will. How can we make the best decisions for her when she has information that we don’t?”

“We can’t,” he agreed, frustrated. “I don’t know the right thing to do.”

“I think…” Lyra began slowly. “I think we’ve got to make decisions together. All of us. It’s going to me a matter of working with her and not against her.”

He thought about that for a minute or so. Kirjava peered off unhappily as he did.

“Or maybe you’re right,” Will finally said. He looked back at Lyra. “Maybe we should try to find a way to get the knife to work again and just run from all of this.”

Lyra’s heart skipped a beat. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear from him. He had shut down that idea time after time, and now, here he was, suggesting it.

“Maybe we should,” she said quietly, hope brimming up within her.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Will admitted. 

“Iorek may. But how can we get to Svalbard?” 

“I don’t know. Could you ask your alethiometer?”

For the first time, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. “I dunno. Now that I know who I’m talking to…and I know that she wants to make Vera reform the church…I feel like I can’t trust it.”

“It still can’t lie to you. And you always knew it had opinions about things. Think of all the times it’s refused to answer questions about Vera…maybe now that we know what we know, it will.”

He had a point. But still, she felt as if something she loved and trusted dearly had suddenly changed overnight. It was unsettling. She was tired of feeling that way.

“I’ll give it a try.”

* * *

 

She waited until after lunch to sit down in the sitting room with her alethiometer. Vera was reading on the carpet at her feet. Lyra didn’t even bother getting her books. It seemed unnecessary.

Her first question was simple. _Are you who my daughter says you are?_

The affirmative answer didn’t shock her. She nodded once to herself, took a deep breath, tucked her hair behind her ears, and kept going.

 _What do you want Vera to do?_  

The answer came to her as easily as it once had when she was a girl herself. She recognized that it was something outside of herself allowing that. 

 _She will fix the mess the Authority made,_ it said. _You, your parents, and Will started the process, but it cannot be completed until the world knows the truth. The Authority corrupted the world in the guise of perfecting it; that must be righted._

 _Why Vera?_ Lyra asked.

The alethiometer didn’t resent the question or shy away from it. It was probably one of the first times in the past five years it’d openly answered questions surrounding Vera. 

_She is the only one capable of receiving the truth. She is the only one capable of sending that truth out into the world._

_Why? What made her this way?_

_You and Will._

It was a terrible answer. Lyra felt frustrated, and as soon as she let herself feel that emotion, she slipped clumsily from her focused mindset. She panicked a bit; what if she couldn’t ever get it back the way she’d just had it? She’d been receiving the answers with such ease that she felt eleven again. Thankfully, though, her alethiometer wasn’t through with her: she fell back into that same easy mindset as soon as she closed her eyes and tried again.

_What about Will and I made her this way? What we went through? Or who we are?_

_Both,_ it answered. _You both posses traits that were crucial for Vera to inherit. Your experiences as children changed you from your peers; the Dust surrounding you two surmounts the Dust surrounding anybody else on this earth or any other._

 _And the Dust passed onto Vera? And that’s what makes her special?_  

_It did, yes. And it has multiplied as she’s grown and started forming her own ideas. But the experiences you and Will went through attributed to her uniqueness, as well. The gifts you obtained from that fairy that you passed onto her, the gifts the Shaman Stanislaus Grumman passed onto his son that his son then passed onto his daughter— all of it is important. There is no one answer to why she’s the way she is. It has all attributed._

Lyra took a moment to process all that. She looked down at her daughter; she was lying on her tummy on the carpet flipping seriously though one of Lyra’s economic history texts, her inherited brow pursed in deep concentration, her lips moving slightly as she whispered the words under her breath. Lyra’s heart expanded at once with love. She had never known it was possible to love anything as much as she loved her child, and that love was untouched by all this information. It didn’t make her admire or love her daughter any more to know she was ‘special’, because to Lyra, she had always been special. To Lyra, she had been perfect from the second she first laid eyes on her. But she didn’t care much about her daughter being ‘great’. She just wanted her to be happy.

It was time to ask the question she’d wondered since the rumors surrounding her baby had first started (before her baby had even been born). It was a question her alethiometer had scolded her for asking time and time again. But instinctively, she knew it would answer her now.

 _Will this task kill my daughter? Are you asking her to sacrifice herself for this cause?_  

The hands of the alethiometer swung into action at once. But they didn’t land on the symbols used to scold her.

_No. I would not ask anything dangerous of her without protecting her. I cannot say she will never suffer; she will. To live is to suffer, among many other things. But this task will not kill her; it will uplift her. It will fulfill her. You must follow her lead, and you must trust the angel guarding the door. I have sent him there._

It seemed to Lyra like her alethiometer was ending their conversation, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. She realized that she felt as if she were talking to an old friend. She wasn’t done. 

_What sort of things will be asked of Vera? When?_

_Follow her lead. She will be shown the way. She will lead you. She won’t take any step too big for her; she will do what she is able and no more than that. As she grows, her ambition will, too._

Lyra rushed to ask her final few questions. Her hands shook slightly as she twisted to the correct symbols. _Can Will and I mend the knife? Should we?_

_The knife cannot be mended, but another can be made. It will one day be important._

Lyra didn’t understand. _So another should be made? Why will it be important?_  

 _“_ Mummy, what’s this word?” 

Lyra was yanked from her daze by Vera dropping a book into her lap. She struggled to make out the words on the page; her head was spinning a bit from suddenly returning to the present. She felt frustrated and unfulfilled, but she knew that the conversation— and it had felt like that, like a proper conversation— was over and would never come again unless the being she’d been communicating with willed it.

“This word. I don’t understand.” Vera was frustrated. Lyra wanted to remind her that she was only five and attempting to make sense of a book on economics, but she knew better than to belittle her that way. 

“Let me see,” Lyra said. She pulled the book over to herself and peered where Vera’s finger was pointed. “Countervailing duties.”

“Countervailing…” Vera repeated, trying the word out.

“Would you like me to tell you what it means?”

Vera quickly pulled the book back. “No, don’t! I want to read and find out!”

Lyra held her hands up defensively. “Fine! Let me know if you change your mind.”

Vera hefted the book back up. “Okay. I can do it, though.”

“Sure.” Lyra rose. She placed her alethiometer into the bag at her waist. “I’m going to go check on your dad. He’s in the office.” She glanced over at Pantalaimon and Kirjava near the window. They nodded once at her to show they’d keep an eye on Vera and Max. “Stay here, okay?" 

Vera nodded obediently. She seemed so absorbed in the book that Lyra doubted she’d even heard what she said. Shaking her head in affectionate disbelief, Lyra left her daughter to explore a book she’d read while getting her Master’s in peace.

Will had told her he was ‘refreshing’ himself on the medical terminology of his world— since they were going to switch back soon— but Lyra had known that was probably a lie. He never forgot anything medical from his own world; it was second nature to him, the terms and the cures, like Lyra’s alethiometer symbols were second nature to her. Sure enough, when she entered, he was not looking over any of his dozens of medical texts. Instead, he was sitting at Lyra’s desk with the lamplight shining on what looked like hundreds of iridescent shards of metal and glass. Lyra’s heart jumped in her chest at the sight, for she knew at once what it was. 

She was quiet as she walked over to stand beside him. He glanced up at her briefly. He was careful not to touch any of the shards with his bare hands— he was picking through them very carefully with some sort of medical tool that looked like huge metal tweezers— but Lyra could tell his hands were itching to touch the knife again in some way. She was certain some part of him felt for the knife the way she felt for her alethiometer. What would it feel like to have it in pieces under her hands? Horrible, she knew that much.

“I’ve got more information,” Lyra sat. Will scooted slightly to the left, leaving a bit of space on the edge of the chair for Lyra to perch, and she did so. He wrapped his arm around her to hold her securely in place.

“Your alethiometer cooperated?” 

“Oh yes. Just listen for a bit, okay? It’s a lot.” 

“Okay,” he agreed. He set the tweezer-things down and held her injured hand very gently in his.  Lyra began. She told him everything her alethiometer had told her about Vera, about them, about the universe. She ended with the information on the knife, but of course he was less interested in that when the information preceding it had to do with their daughter’s life.

“And can we trust this…being?” asked Will. “Are we certain she can’t lie to us?”

Lyra shook her head. “I don’t think so, Will. It didn’t feel like that. It felt…well, it felt like talking to my alethiometer: familiar, comfortable, safe. Only it was easier than it’s ever been. I don’t doubt any of it. It was clear to me.”

She saw the pain as it flashed over his strong (brave, beautiful) features. He didn’t have to say anything. She knew what he was feeling. She knew the desire rooted so deep in his heart that it would pain him to remove it: the wish that Vera could have the carefree, normal childhood he couldn’t. She wished terribly that she could help make that desire a reality. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do a thing about this and that was as clear to her now as anything had ever been. So she reached up and she held his face in her hands. The stubble lining his cheeks was scratchy and lovely against her palms. She stroked over his cheekbones lightly with her thumbs, her heart sore and softened with love for him.

“I don’t like it, either,” she told him quietly. She studied his eyes. There were what felt like hundreds of words traveling through their steady gaze. The air felt heavy between them. “But that’s the reality. We have what we have. We do what we can. That’s all we can do. She’ll be safe. We’ll make sure of it. Other than that…” she lifted her shoulders up and let them fall back down. For a moment, she worried her shrug would anger him, but there wasn’t any room for misunderstanding. He was seeing all of her.

“It doesn’t matter,” he realized, his voice gruff.

That realization settled over Lyra at the same time. She felt peace wash over her. She leaned in and kissed his lips gently, hers curled up into a small smile.

“No,” she agreed. “I don’t think it does.”

“She’ll be okay. This won’t hurt her. She’ll be safe. And we’ll be together. It doesn’t matter.”

“What will be will be. We’ll handle it when it comes. We don’t have to fight anybody anymore, Will. I think we’ve just got to work as a team. Us and Vera. Together.”

She wasn’t taken aback when his lips crashed into hers. If anything, she was impatient. His eyes had been burning into hers— so deep, dark, and lovely— and she felt she could never have him close enough. Her heart had expanded and filled her entire chest so that she was one emotion, one thought, one sensation. She met his kiss with just as much fervor, her fingers twisting into his hair, her body pressing firmly against his in their shared seat. It felt like ages that they’d been at odds about all of this; it was wonderful to stand on common ground with him again, to feel stable and secure in their life together, to stay afloat atop the ocean of uncertainties that was their life. It was clear again, finally. Vera was safe, and the ultimate outcome— the Church’s demise— was what they _all_ wanted, wasn’t it? If they all worked together…and if it was something Vera wanted, something she’d be protected through…they could weather it. But only together. And she was as breathlessly thankful to have him now as she’d once been decades ago. Had there ever been a blessing in her life better than Will Parry?

Things got away from them as they had a tendency of doing. They were lucky their child didn’t wander to them: either her economic history book was so enthralling she had no desire to walk away from it or their dæmons sensed what was going on in the office and kept her from them. It was probably the latter. Lyra was breathlessly thankful either way because she and Will certainly weren’t thinking anything of that ’til afterwards. It had been weeks since they’d been so swept up in each other and Lyra had desperately missed it.

“Wasn’t in my plans for today, but I’m not complaining,” Will murmured against her hair. Lyra smiled.

“Me neither. I missed you, Will.”

He hadn’t gone anywhere, but in a way, he sort of had. They hadn’t seen eye to eye in a while, and that had created an emotional distance she didn’t like at all.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult,” he said quietly. Lyra would’ve liked to have teased him about how extra-pliable he was in moments like these, but she decided to take the apology for what it was. “I never like arguing with you, and for a bit there, it felt like that’s all I was doing. I’ve just been terrified, Lyra. More scared than I’ve ever been before. Everything was so much easier before, when we didn’t have a child to worry about…everything is so much harder now.”

She agreed with every bit of that. “I know. I’ve felt that way, too. But things are going to get better. They’ve got to.”

She felt the key to improving things was to fight less — with each other, with Vera, with the angel, with the universe. It would be difficult— Lyra loved to argue— but it would be important. And she knew what the very first step would be.

* * *

 

“Vera,” Lyra greeted. She kneeled down on the plush rug beside her daughter; she hadn’t budged from her previous spot. She was still reading the same book she’d been reading before. Lyra moved to sit beside her. “Daddy and I want to talk to you.”

Vera smiled up at her. “Okay. Mummy, did you know that India once won an entire war by refusing to export any of their sugarcane?!”

Lyra laughed. “I did know that, yes!”

“‘Export’,” Will repeated. “Are you turning into a little economist, Vera? I thought you wanted to be a doctor like me?”

Vera looked at him innocently. “Can’t I be both?”

“I suppose that’s possible,” he agreed.

Lyra smoothed her skirt over her legs and reached out to nudge her daughter’s chin up. Vera met her eyes and looked away from her book. Lyra glanced once at Will, took a deep breath, and said: “We’re ready to listen. What happens next?”

Max moved from Vera’s side and curled up in her lap. He was a small dog now; he rested his chin on Vera’s knee.

“We can’t go away again.”

Will set his hand on Vera’s. “Not even to get Nana and Mary?”

“Nana and Mary can get here to us. We have to stay.”

“What about the Church?” worried Lyra.

Vera peered at her seriously. “That’s _why_ we’ve got to stay.”

Lyra and Will looked at each other again. She could tell he wanted to argue against that as badly as she did. But the time for that had passed.

“Okay then,” said Lyra.

Vera smiled.


End file.
